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Odeh: racist Israeli laws to benefit joint Arab list

The unified Arab list is expected to see success in the next Knesset elections as a result of discriminatory Israeli laws, according to the head of the joint list of all Arab parties.
Ayman Odeh (5).jpeg
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The Arab-Jewish party Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) has been a small but permanent fixture in the Israeli parliament for years. It usually won four or five of the 120 Knesset seats in elections, providing a fig leaf to Israeli democratic claims without being able to influence either internal or external policies. In 2013, Hadash won four seats. This "problem" is set to change in the coming elections, ironically, as a result of the Israeli right's attempts to keep Palestinian Arabs out of the Knesset.

Ayman Odeh, the head of the joint list of all the Arab parties in Israel, told Al-Monitor that the combination of racist policies and changes to the election law helped produce this unprecedented list. The unification was created as a result of “raising the threshold and an increase in racist policies and practices, which appeared in racist laws as well as the unprecedented assault on Gaza in the summer of 2014.”

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