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“People say, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t see myself as part of a society where women cannot sit in the front of the bus.’ People don’t want to be part of such an extreme society.”

“The underlying issue is that there’s an ideological contest over the soul of the state of Israel and the Jewish people.”

47 percent identified the religious-secular divide as the most acute in society, more than twice as high as the next ranked choice of politics, at 19 percent, followed by rich and poor, at 15 percent.

But it is also code for a broader sociological shift,

“There are elements in the making of a Kulturkampf,”

And in late 2011, an international uproar was set off when a group of Haredi men spit at an 8-year-old Modern Orthodox girl on her way to school, calling her a prostitute because her clothing was seen as not modest enough.

Beyond the draft, Mr. Lapid’s party platform said it would “work to promote” civil marriage, including for same-sex couples, and “rectify inequality in family laws.” On his Facebook page, Mr. Lapid wrote that “as far as women’s exclusion is concerned there can be no compromise or negotiation.”

the Third Intifada is based on a strategy of making Israelis feel strategically secure but morally insecure.

The first two intifadas failed in the end because they never included a map of a two-state solution and security arrangements. They were more raw outbursts of rage against the occupation. You cannot move the Israeli silent majority when you make them feel strategically insecure and morally secure, which is what Hamas did with its lunatic shelling of Israel after it withdrew from Gaza

President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, though, got all he wanted by making Israelis feel strategically secure but morally insecure about holding any of his land.

the death of Mandela has left many of his followers looking for ways to honor his legacy and carry on his work. On some college campuses, they’ve found it: boycotting Israel until it ends the West Bank occupation.

And there may not be much uniting such a wide range of parties other than in their desire to oust Netanyahu. With pressing issues such as how to keep the ceasefire holding with Hamas-led militants in Gaza and rising tensions in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, this could be a fragile government easily broken apart by ideological divisions.

The coalition would combine parties from across the political spectrum that normally disagree on many political issues but have apparently united on the need to move on from the Netanyahu era

But the simple fact that a right-wing party was willing to form a coalition with groups representing progressive, centrist and Arab voters, he said, already amounted to a revolution in a country where politics have been dominated by a single person for more than a decade.

Bennett and Lapid have until late Wednesday to secure the support of 61 members of the 120-seat Knesset, Israel's parliament

Their success may depend on the culturally conservative Arab party known as the United Arab List or Ra'am, which would be the first Arab-led party to participate in a coalition government in Israel.

Though Bennett's Yamina Party is considered more conservative than Netanyahu's Likud, hundreds of right-wing activists protested as reports about a possible coalition with left-leaning parties filled the Israeli media.

But for many Palestinians, Bennett — a former settler who once vowed to "do everything in my power to make sure [Palestinians] never get a state" – is viewed, at best, as unlikely to change Israel's stance toward the long-running stalemate.

Negotiations continued Monday in Israel over an unlikely political coalition poised to dethrone the country's longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The attempt to put an end to Netanyahu's rule, publicly announced Sunday night by hard-right party leader Naftali Bennett, has been welcomed by a surprising cross-section of left-wing and right-wing Israelis, as Netanyahu and his allies fight fiercely to keep him in power ahead of a looming Wednesday deadline for a new coalition to be reached.

If lawmakers succeed, Bennett, a one-time Netanyahu aide who now heads Israel's tiny Yamina Party, would take the prime minister's seat as head of a coalition government sharing power with centrist politician Yair Lapid, a former TV news anchor and finance minister whose Yesh Atid is the second largest of Israel's many political parties. The two would take turns as prime minister if the fragile coalition manages to hold for long enough, with Bennett going first.

The new government ​consists of a number of parties from across the political spectrum, from the left-wing Meretz to Bennett's right-wing Yamina party. In a historic moment, the small Islamist party United Arab List also decided to join the coalition, the first time an Arab-Israeli party has joined a coalition. The party is unlikely to have a minister in the government, but will have negotiated with the coalition on issues important to them.

Bennett is the son of American immigrants and a former elite commando in the Israeli military who made millions in the Israeli tech industry.

Bennett once led a West Bank settler organization and has previously said he did not believe in a two-state solution that would establish a state for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

alarm over the failure to address the Palestinian problem has grown in a surprising place — among some of the former princes of the Zionist right wing.

“It is a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads,” he said. “We are living on illusions. We must do everything we can on the ground to increase the separation between us and the Palestinians so that the idea of one state will go away. But we are doing nothing.”

Mr. Lapid said Israel should not change its settlement policy to lure the Palestinians to negotiations, nor should any part of Jerusalem become the capital of the Palestinian state he says he longs for. He has not reached out to any Palestinian politicians nor spoken publicly on the issue. As finance minister, he is focused on closing the government’s deficit.

most Israelis considered the peace process irrelevant because they believed that the Palestinians had no interest in a deal, especially in the current Middle Eastern context of rising Islamism. “Debating the peace process to most Israelis is the equivalent of debating the color of the shirt you will wear when landing on Mars,”

An afternoon in Ramallah revealed no stronger sense of urgency among Palestinians. But, unlike Israeli Jews, they are increasingly depressed and despondent over their quandary and dysfunctional leadership.

All of which suggests that, as has long been argued, there can be no Israeli-Palestinian peace deal so long as outsiders want it more than the parties themselves. Some have likened Israel to the deck of the Titanic. That may not be right, but you can’t help wondering about that next iceberg.

The expulsion of Imam Doudi was recommended by the Marseille authorities under a French law regarding “deliberate acts tending to provoke discrimination, hatred and violence toward an individual or a group.”

Here and elsewhere in France, Salafism is increasingly seen as the enemy, a menacing way-station to terrorism. Five members of Imam Doudi’s flock left to fight jihad in Syria, the police say, though the imam denies knowing them.

His sermons are “exactly contrary to the values of the Republic,” said Marseille’s prefect of police, Olivier de Mazières, a terrorism specialist who has led the case against the cleric, in an interview in his office. “We think he’s preaching hatred, discrimination, violence.”

Scholars see a more ambiguous relationship between Salafism and jihad than the police do. “The source of radicalization is not Salafism,” Olivier Roy writes in the book “Jihad and Death. “There is a common matrix, but not a causal relationship.

“Scholars will tell you that Salafism does not lead to jihadism, sociologically,” he said. “You can get to jihadism without having passed through a Salafist mosque.”Those distinctions are being lost in a renewed wave of public anxiety in France, however.“We must forbid the spread of Salafism, because it’s the enemy,” the former prime minister Manuel Valls said in a radio interview last week.The newspaper Le Figaro said in a front-page editorial that “our country must launch a vast operation to eradicate Salafism.

While Imam Doudi acknowledges having once been a follower of Osama bin Laden and the radical Algerian leader Ali Belhadj, the preacher denied that he, or Salafism, was extremist.“Salafism is merely the reasonable middle ground between extremism and negligence. There are sects that pretend to be Salafist — Al Qaeda, Daesh — but are not,” Imam Doudi said. “These are extremists, and in our preaching we are opposed to them.”

“In the Quran, you’ll find verses justifying lapidation” — death by stoning — “and jihad,” Imam Doudi said. “Sooner or later, I’ll read them.”His lawyer, Nabil Boudi, supported the assertion. “It’s a formula you’ll hear in every sermon,” Mr. Boudi said. None of the phrases cited by the government explicitly justify terrorist attacks. Imam Doudi said he is resolutely against such assaults.

Mr. Geisser, the Islam expert, is among those who say that, if anything, Imam Doudi was known as a government stooge.“He was best known for having good relations with the security services,” Mr. Geisser said.“He thought that to collaborate was to be protected,” Mr. Geisser added. “He’s someone who stuck out his hand, and it ended up getting burned.”

“It could be dangerous for France,” said Fayçal Mansari, a mason, who called Imam Doudi “ a barrier” against Islamic radicals.“Very few people truly know Islam,” Mr. Mansari said. “If they get rid of a truly learned professor, people will find themselves disarmed.”

Over the last few days, factions from the right, center and left decided that they wanted to be done with Netanyahu. They agreed to a power-sharing agreement in which Bennett and his nationalist Yamina party would hold the prime minister’s position for the first half of the four-year term, to be followed by Yair Lapid, of the centrist Yesh Atid party, who would hold it for the second half.

o keep the coalition together, they have vowed to avoid new policies on Israeli-Palestinian issues at the beginning and to focus on areas where compromise seems more plausible, like education and infrastructure.

He urged nationalist politicians who have joined the coalition talks not to establish what he called a "leftist government.

Bennett, a former Netanyahu aide turned rival, said he was taking the dramatic step to prevent yet another election. While sharing Netanyahu's nationalist ideology, Bennett said there was no feasible way for the hard-line right wing to form a governing majority in parliament.

Each of the past four elections was seen as a referendum on Netanyahu — who has become a polarizing figure as he stands trial on corruption charges — with each ending in deadlock.

If his opponents fail to form a government and new elections are triggered, it would give him another chance at seeing the election of a parliament that is in favor of granting him immunity from prosecution. But if they succeed, he would find himself in the much weaker position of opposition leader and potentially find himself facing unrest in his Likud party.

In order to form a government, a party leader must secure the support of a 61-seat majority in parliament. Because no single party controls a majority on its own, coalitions are usually built with smaller partners.

But with Wednesday's deadline looming, negotiations have kicked into high gear. Lapid has reached coalition deals with three other parties so far. If he finalizes a deal with Bennett, the remaining partners are expected to quickly fall into place.

Mr. Netanyahu now has 28 days to try to cobble together a coalition that could command a majority of at least 61 in the 120-seat Parliament, with the possibility of an additional 14-day extension.

If he fails, the president, Reuven Rivlin, could task another candidate or refer the choice of a candidate to Parliament.

Still, even Mr. Rivlin expressed doubts about Mr. Netanyahu’s chances of success, a day after he met with representatives of all 13 parties elected to Parliament and received their recommendations for the premiership.

In order to form the kind of “full-on right-wing government” Mr. Netanyahu promised his voters, the prime minister would need the support of another small right-wing party that has been sitting on the fence. He would also need the far-right flank of his potential coalition to agree to rely on the support of a small Arab, Islamist party that has become a potential kingmaker.

Mr. Rivlin referred to the legal and constitutional debate that has been roiling Israel, saying he was well aware of the criticism.

“It is the role of the Parliament to decide on the substantive and ethical question of the fitness of a candidate facing criminal charges to serve as prime minister,” he added.

“The president fulfilled his duty and he had no choice,” Mr. Lapid said shortly after Mr. Netanyahu was tasked with trying to form the government. “But giving the mandate to Netanyahu is a shameful disgrace that tarnishes Israel and casts shame on our status as a law-abiding state,” he added.