Sharon's Domestic Battle: A Gamble
As a soldier, Ariel Sharon had a reputation for defying odds and orders, brashly gambling on his own judgment and sometimes losing as big as, at other times, he won.

Late Monday night, he gambled again, astonishing ministers of a scrupulously religious Sephardic party by kicking them out of his government despite their importance to his coalition. Mr. Sharon acted after the party, Shas, voted against his proposed emergency economic package, intended to address a budget deficit caused in large measure by the military offensive he recently ordered in the West Bank.

Mr. Sharon also shoved out deputy ministers of a smaller party, United Torah Judaism, that had also opposed his budget plan. The plan was narrowly defeated in the Parliament.

His dismissal of the ministers was consistent with Mr. Sharon's take-it-or-leave-it approach to being prime minister. Just in the last two months, he has conducted Israel's biggest military operation in 20 years; defied the United Nations; defied his own party's central leadership, and resisted pressure from the Bush administration
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/22/international/middleeast/22SHAR.html