Yesh Atid MK Ron Katz leaving Knesset, to be replaced by Arab community leader

26 July 2026, 9:34 am

Edit

MK Ron Katz attends a Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee meeting on a law concerning the ultra-Orthodox draft at the Knesset in Jerusalem on June 25, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Opposition lawmaker Ron Katz, of Yesh Atid, announces he is resigning from the Knesset, and will not seek reelection.

The party picks a relatively unknown Arab Israeli community figure to replace him.

“After 15 years of significant public service, the time has come for me to take a break from public life and open a new chapter,” Katz says, adding that he tendered his resignation before the formal end of the Knesset term to avoid receiving a public salary after already making the decision to leave. Lapid and the party thank Katz.

Yesh Atid announces Katz will be replaced by Muhammad Shoko Elhega, a “person of education and social initiative, with more than 20 years of experience in education, youth, and integration of Arab young people into Israeli society.”

The incoming lawmaker is “founder of the Atidna youth movement, the first Arab-Zionist youth movement in Israel,” the party says in a statement.

He currently serves as director of the informal education department in the Tamra municipality, in the Lower Galilee, the party notes, as well as treasurer of the Council of Youth Organizations in Israel and head of the party’s Arab headquarters.