But he argues that his proposed reforms would ultimately benefit the ultra-Orthodox themselves, by rescuing them from their ghettos of poverty and indolence.Mr Lapid urged a secular coalition of Likud, Labour and his own Shinui.
Shinui's leader, Tommy Lapid, urged Labour to dump its leader, Amram Mitzna, if he persists in opposing the idea of a "secular unity government" comprising Likud, Labour and Shinui.But Mr Mitzna is adamant, and for the moment at least he is carrying his tattered party with him.
But some of their rabbis are said already to be pondering a compromise over the draft.If Mr Netanyahu were to co-opt the religious parties and two other small secular ones, he and his Likud-Beitenu alliance might be able to govern without Naftali Bennett's ultra-hawkish Jewish Home, which got 12 seats.
On Wednesday, he challenged Likud to join the "march" to a more secular state by forming a new Labor-Likud government of national unity, similar to one that ruled in the 1980's.
The struggle to limit the powers of the Supreme Court is part of a broader contest over the nature of Israel pitting religious and nationalist activists against advocates of a more liberal and secular-minded country.There are a few survivors of the old Likud spirit.
With a split Likud, the new Kadima, Mr. Sharon's disappearance, the collapse of the centrist, secular Shinui Party, and Mr. Peretz instead of Shimon Peres as leader of the Labor Party, few Israelis felt that they could vote in traditional ways.
With what he calls Likud's "natural allies"—the religious parties and the far-right Yisrael Beitenu, backed by secular immigrants from Russia he can count on 61 seats, ignoring Labour's 13.
The Israeli leader, in two radio interviews, coupled his proposal for a governing alliance between his Labor Party and Likud -- an uneasy left-right coalition that Israel last saw in the late 1980's -- with a challenge to Mr. Sharon, the Likud leader, to prove Likud's credentials as a secular party and join him in such a "civic revolution".
