IN what represents an embarrassing climbdown for the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, the cabinet is today set to approve Gen Ariel Sharon, the former defence minister omitted by Mr Netanyahu from his original ministerial team, as the grandly titled new Minister of National Infrastructure.
In that new position, the hardline Mr Sharon will be well placed to oversee a renewed West Bank Jewish settlement drive, a move that could destroy the peace process with the Palestinians.
Final details of this specially constructed new ministry for Mr Sharon were still being negotiated last night. But since the Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, has threatened to resign and take several of his loyalists with him unless Mr Sharon is brought into the cabinet, it seems fairly certain that the appointment will go through.
Presumably because he preferred to run a government without Mr Sharon's intimidating presence, Mr Netanyahu last month named a ministerial lineup that excluded him, despite the fact that Mr Sharon played a key role in engineering Mr Netanyahu's narrow election victory on May 29th.
Mr Sharon had coveted one of the top three ministerial spots, defence, finance or foreign. The job he is now getting is rather vague in scope, but may well given the controversial ex general more power than any of those exalted ministries.
His new portfolio incorporates the entire previous energy ministry, various sections of the Agriculture and Housing and Construction Ministries, and responsibilities previously held by the Prime Minister's Office.
Of particular significance, the ministry, with its multi billion dollar budget, is likely to give Mr Sharon authority over state lands, the Public Works Authority and the construction of by pass roads for West Bank Jewish settlers.
As a determined champion of West Bank settlement, and vigorous opponent of trading land for peace with the Palestinians, Mr Sharon would appear to have control of all the tools necessary to encourage a resumed flow of Jews to the settlements, with grave consequences for the already fragile Israeli Palestinian peace accords.
In his first career as a soldier, Mr Sharon (68) was regarded as a brilliant tactician, but his reluctance to obey orders prevented him reaching the position of chief of staff.
Later, as a politician, he displayed a similar reluctance, launching the 1982 invasion of Lebanon that left Israel embroiled in a misadventure that cost hundreds of lives and forced the then prime minister, Menachem Begin, into premature retirement.
Espousing leftist positions in his early political years, he has since become a champion of the right. And now, embittered by having to battle for a cabinet job, he is likely to prove the most acerbic and dangerous of the growing number of Mr Netanyahu's critics within the government.
. The Jerusalem District Court last night dismissed a Labour Party petition to declare illegal the May 29th election results on the grounds of widespread fraud.
The court ruled that selective recounts carried out by Labour had failed to prove anything sinister in the original counting process, and while there may have been occasional "human error by the official vote counters, that was insufficient to undermine Mr Netanyahu's narrow electoral victory over Labour's Mr Shimon Peres.