Female, Druze Likud candidates fail to impress
A Muslim woman and a few Druze candidates are competing in the Likud primaries for a minority slot in the party’s next Knesset list.
One Muslim woman and several Druze candidates are currently fighting over a spot on the Likud slate reserved for minority groups for the next Knesset. But what are they looking for in a movement that promoted the nationality law, which anchored the Jewish nature of the State of Israel?
The female Muslim contender is 25-year-old Dima Tayeh, who was born in the Arab city of Qalansuwa (central Israel) and today lives in Kafr Manda. One might wonder how she can view the Likud as a political home after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s infamous statement during the last elections that “Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls.” This kind of rhetoric doesn’t seem to bother Tayeh, who told Al-Monitor that Ayman Odeh, chairman of the Joint List, made a similar prediction. But Odeh’s December 2018 statement was made in a different context: He was actually mocking Netanyahu’s words. Odeh meant that Arab voters would come out en masse to vote for the Joint List in protest against the nationality law.
According to Tayeh, there are numerous Likud voters in Qalansuwa. She says that more than 120 residents of the town registered for the Likud ahead of the Feb. 5 primaries. In the 2015 elections, the Likud received 42 votes in Qalansuwa.
In reaction to Tayeh’s announcement that she was running in the Likud primaries, Tayeh’s family reportedly issued a sharp rebuke: “Due to her statements, we will not make contact with her or give her any assistance until she retracts her words and declares loyalty to her people and her faith.” However, Tayeh claims that her family members did not write the letter and that a complaint about the matter has been submitted to the police.
