From the Liveblog of
Saturday, May 16, 2026
Former MK Youssef Atauna, Nihaya Wishahy round out top 5 on Hadash electoral slate
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleAriela Karmel is a political correspondent at The Times of Israel. She previously reported for Calcalist and Haaretz. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern and African History from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.
Arab-majority party Hadash elects former MK Youssef Atauna to the fourth slot and Nihaya Wishahy to the fifth slot on the faction’s electoral slate in internal primaries.
Atauna, a Bedouin politician from the Negev, served in the Knesset from 2017 to 2025 before resigning under a rotation agreement between Hadash and Ta’al, which ran together in the 2022 elections. He defeated former Arraba mayor Omar Wahad Nasser and activist and journalist Nadra Saadi Abu Dabi for the slot.
His return to the Knesset, alongside former MK Yousef Jabareen’s election earlier today to lead the party, underscores Hadash’s effort to broaden its appeal beyond its traditional base and challenge Mansour Abbas’s Islamist United Arab List (Ra’am) for support among Bedouin voters in the Negev and Arab voters in central Israel’s Triangle region.
Wishahy, elected to the fifth slot after all other candidates withdrew their candidacies, is the only woman elected to Hadash’s slate in the vote, the first time in more than a decade that no women will hold one of the party’s top slots.
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