Tel Aviv, April 1 (RHC)-- Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has resigned from his post, increasing problems for the coalition regime of Benjamin Netanyahu.   Israeli Channel 12 reported on Monday that Smotrich resigned in a letter to Netanyahu.

A spokesperson for Smotrich said the resignation was a protest against ultranationalist-Zionist Jewish Power party head Itamar Ben-Gvir's request for more ministerial positions upon his return to join the regime again. Ben-Gvir had quit the Netanyahu regime in January.

Smotrich will return to his seat in the Knesset as a lawmaker for his far-right Religious Zionism party.  The resignation will not collapse Netanyahu's coalition regime, but it will increase problems for it.

The move highlights growing fractures within Israel’s far-right coalition, which has faced internal divisions on key appointments and policies in recent months.

In January, Ben-Gvir, along with his entire party, resigned from Netanyahu’s ruling coalition over the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

The party called the ceasefire agreement a “capitulation to Hamas” and the renunciation of the Israeli regime’s so-called achievements since the start of the war.  Ben-Gvir was sitting on the Israeli cabinet alongside two fellow Jewish Power MPs.  His party also holds six seats in the 120-seat parliament (the Knesset).