RAMALLAH, West Bank - Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia withdrew his resignation at Yasser Arafat's insistence today, a Cabinet minister said, ending a political crisis in the Palestinian government.

Qureia told his Cabinet he had agreed to stay on the job but he was clearly angry at the Cabinet's limited authority and said he saw himself only as a caretaker premier.

Qureia "told Arafat that his government must have real authority, especially over the security branches in order for it to be effective," said Qadoura Fares, a minister without portfolio.

The prime minister left the meeting from a back door of Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah to avoid speaking to reporters. Arafat, who is president of the Palestinian Authority, attended the meeting but made no comment afterward.

The Cabinet crisis exploded after a series of kidnappings and violent demonstrations in Gaza last week, followed by Arafat's reshuffle of top security posts. He appointed his widely disliked cousin, Moussa Arafat, to the top security job in Gaza.

The prime minister submitted his resignation on Saturday, protesting the upheaval in Gaza and the disorder in the Palestinian security services. On Monday, Arafat reinstated the officer his relative replaced - Abdel Razek al-Majaide - but retained Moussa Arafat in a powerful position, satisfying some of his critics but infuriating others.

As the Palestinian leader tried to defuse the tension, Israeli missiles struck a Gaza militants' safe house, wounding five, a spokesman for a Palestinian group said.

The two airstrikes, one on Monday afternoon and the second after midnight, targeted the same house in the Shati refugee camp next to Gaza City on the Mediterranean beach, said witnesses and a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committee.

The committee is an umbrella group of militants who left other Palestinian factions. Its militants do not answer to outside authorities and often carry out attacks against their wishes.

Tension in Gaza has also been heightened by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to pull Israeli forces and settlers out of the seaside territory by the end of next year - a "unilateral disengagement" plan that has rival Palestinian groups jockeying for position.

However, Sharon is having his own problems over the pullout plan. He lost his parliamentary majority because of opposition in his own government to the proposal. Now he is approaching opposition parties to join his coalition, to restore stability.

On Monday, a gunman shot and killed a district court judge in a Tel Aviv suburb, police said. Israel's justice minister said it was the first such killing in Israel's history.

The 49-year-old judge, identified as Adi Azar, was in his car near his home in Ramat Hasharon when he was shot from close range by a man on a motorcycle, witnesses told police. The assailant escaped.