Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to appoint Communications Minister Ayoub Kara as Israel’s ambassador to Egypt. In the February Likud primaries, Kara came in 39th on the party’s list of candidates for the April Knesset elections. Since the Likud won only 35 seats in the legislature, Kara was left out. He claimed he had been the victim of an internal hit job.
Now Netanyahu appears determined to not only compensate Kara but also appease members of his Druze community, which is furious at Netanyahu over the nationality law he pushed through the Knesset last year. The Druze serve in Israel’s army but the nationality law undermines their equal rights by defining Israel as an exclusively Jewish state. Many disappointed Druze Likud supporters gave their votes to other parties in the April 9 elections. In the Druze town of Daliyat al-Karmel, for example, 7.79% voted for the Likud in the 2015 elections, but only 2.65% did so this year.
