Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defiantly declared that he would not quit, despite one of the harshest government inquiry commission reports in Israel’s history.

Israeli Cabinet minister Eitan Cabel will announce his resignation today in protest at the critical findings of the Lebanon war inquiry, his spokesman says.

The Israeli Labour Party’s secretary-general, Eitan Cabel, today said the defection of Labour politician Dalia Itzik to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s new party signals that her mentor, Shimon Peres, will do the same.