Ayman Odeh reelected as Hadash party leader ahead of November election
MKs Aida Touma-Sliman and Ofer Cassif take 2nd and 3rd places; Joint List alliance has yet to divvy up spots on united roster
MK Ayman Odeh was reelected Saturday to lead the Hadash party ahead of the November 1 national election.
Hadash, a left-wing party with a communist agenda, is part of the Joint List of Arab-majority parties, and Odeh has led the alliance since 2015. The parties that make up the alliance, Hadash, Ta’al and Balad, have not yet divvied up the spots on the roster for the coming election.
Odeh was reelected with the support of 75 percent of voters. In second place was MK Aida Touma-Sliman, in third place was MK Ofer Cassif, and in fourth place was Youssef Atauna.
In a tweet, Odeh thanked voters for their trust and said the part will seek “to strengthen peace, equality and social justice at the polls over racism and apartheid.”
Last week, the Joint List’s Balad party reelected MK Sami Abu Shehadeh to lead it into the next election, with former leader Mtanes Shehadeh in second place.
Meanwhile the Ra’am party, once a member of the Joint List but now a partner in the coalition, last week reelected Mansour Abbas as leader, shored up by three additional candidates allied to his vision of continuing participation in mainstream Israeli politics.
Ra’am and the Joint List have had a messy divorce since Ra’am broke with Arab parties’ longstanding tradition of boycotting coalitions in order to join the current government. Abbas has proposed an alternative Arab agenda, one focused on improving the lives of the Arab public from within the government while leaving nationalist and Palestinian matters on the back burner.
The Joint List has attacked Ra’am as betraying the Arab agenda, while Abbas has shot back that they are shackled to outdated and irrelevant policies.
The Times of Israel Community.