Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be making an effort over the last few days to shake off reports that he is trying to win back MKs who left Likud for Kadima in a bid to get the approval of 61 MKs so he would be able to topple the government and become prime minister.

"In practice, I am not involved with that," he said in response to a question at Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv, where he met with some 200 volunteers who wanted to work for him.

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Asked when he would find a 61-MK majority to oppose the government and make him prime minister, Netanyahu said he wanted to see early elections.

"What will be determined when 61 hands are raised is ... the public wave that will turn into a tsunami, and that is being built," he said. He said that ultimately, MKs who are not interested in dispersing the Knesset will have to vote for a government turnover.

Netanyahu attacked the government throughout the day on Sunday.

"This government is in free fall," he said during a Likud faction visit to the Jordan Valley. "One failure after another. Now it's a political collapse after the government's hesitation during the Mecca agreement. ... Now they're trying to do too little, too late."

At Likud headquarters later in the day, Netanyahu's comment on Ehud Olmert's speech Thursday, in which the prime minister said, "This is my workplace," was: "You have to do the work, not just go to work."

Netanyahu continued with the same line of attack when he criticized Olmert for holding on to the welfare portfolio for months without appointing a minister to take control full-time. "Apparently, it wasn't so important," Netanyahu said. "There's a minister with a workplace but no work. He goes to work but doesn't do the work."

Also Sunday, the ministerial committee for legislation approved Netanyahu's bill banning Israeli companies from investing in companies abroad that invest in Iran, as part of the struggle to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Likud faction chairman MK Gideon Sa'ar slammed Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni yesterday for a lack of diplomacy.

"It could be that the foreign minister was busy with other things," said Sa'ar. "It could be that the prime minister was also busy with other things."