JERUSALEM -- Natan Sharansky, the onetime symbol of oppressed Soviet Jewry, quit his Cabinet post yesterday to protest Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this summer.

Sharansky, whose views on promoting democracy have won praise from President Bush, said Israel should relinquish Gaza only if the Palestinian government first carries out a wide range of reforms.

In his resignation letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Sharansky said pulling out of the coastal territory without demanding anything in return from the Palestinians "will weaken the chances to build a free Palestinian society and reinforce the terrorist organizations."

Sharansky had telegraphed his intention to resign well in advance, and his departure from Sharon's government was expected to have little impact on the Gaza withdrawal plan.

But it provided yet another rallying point for settlers and their supporters, who still hope to somehow block the uprooting of 21 Gaza settlements and four other small ones in the northern West Bank. Their campaign of protest continues even though the initiative has cleared all legislative hurdles and enjoys the backing of a solid majority of Israelis.

"The struggle against [the withdrawal] will now be reinforced by worthy and uncompromising leadership," said conservative lawmaker Ehud Yatom of the Likud Party.

Sharansky, the diminutive, stocky 57-year-old, who spent a decade in the gulag before being freed and emigrating to Israel in 1986, is greatly admired in Israel for his courageous defiance of the Soviet regime, but he has never won much of a political following.

His main success in public life came when he founded an immigrant-rights party, Yisrael B'Aliyah, in the mid-1990s, which became his springboard to posts in the Knesset and the Cabinet. But he was seen as doing little to serve his constituency's interests, instead focusing on right-wing causes.

Addressing his Cabinet, Sharon delivered carefully chosen words of praise for Sharansky, avoiding any mention of the Gaza pullout and the opposition to it that Sharansky is seeking to marshal. Instead, the prime minister hailed his departing minister's "exceptional work in dealing with anti-Semitism around the world."

Both the Israeli and Palestinian governments are trying to keep a lid on violence in the months leading up to the pullout, expected to begin in mid- to late summer, but small-scale fighting has been edging upward in recent weeks.

An Israeli soldier and a Palestinian militant were killed before dawn yesterday in a shootout in a West Bank village -- Israel's first military fatality since the two sides declared a truce nearly three months ago.

The slain Palestinian militant was identified as Shafik Abdul Ghani, an Islamic Jihad activist suspected of helping plan a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv nightclub in February that killed five Israelis.