Crisis growing for Israeli leader

Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is facing increasing pressure to resign after a member of his cabinet quit over last year's Lebanon war.

Eitan Cabel, a minister without portfolio from the Israeli leader's main governing partner, the Labour Party, told a news conference: "I can no longer sit in a government headed by Ehud Olmert."

Mr Cabel insisted Mr Olmert "must resign" after a commission investigating the inconclusive war against Hezbollah fighters listed on Monday severe failings on the part of the premier, Defence Minister Amir Peretz of Labour and the army chief, who has already quit.

Opposition politicians have also repeatedly called for Mr Olmert to step down. Newspaper headlines have suggested he is a politician with a "noose tightening around his neck" and a "gun to his head".

Despite this, few in the governing coalition seem prepared to face a new election and none of Mr Olmert's rivals within his Kadima party has moved publicly against him.

"I stand behind Olmert's leadership," Public Security Minister Avi Dichter of Kadima said at a ceremony attended by Mr Olmert, welcoming Israel's new police chief.

The Winograd commission stopped short of suggesting Mr Olmert should resign despite saying he carried "supreme responsibility" for launching the assaults on Lebanon without a proper plan after Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers on July 12.

However, a snap Israeli opinion poll found that 69 per cent of the public wanted Mr Olmert to go. It seems that after a series of sleaze allegations many Israelis are disillusioned with their political class.

There will be an opportunity to gauge public opinion on Thursday when a protest rally takes place in Tel Aviv, which organisers hope will be reminiscent of mass demonstrations that brought down Israeli leaders after the failings of previous wars.

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