Kazim AlamIn the Knesset, the Israeli parliament hailed by the West as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, a troubling pattern persists: the relentless targeting of Palestinian-Israeli members, particularly those who voice criticism of Israel’s human rights violations in besieged Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories.
The latest target of this campaign is Ayman Odeh, a leader of the Hadash political alliance who faces imminent expulsion from the Knesset at the hands of his Jewish colleagues.
Far from being an isolated event, the campaign by Jewish members of the Knesset to expel Odeh appears to be well-organised.
“Odeh is not an exception. Every Arab member of the Knesset would tell you that they have suffered incitement and violence,” Sami Abu Shehadeh, a former Knesset member and leader of the Palestinian-Israeli party Balad, tells TRT World, while referring to the commonly used adjective for Palestinian-Israeli lawmakers.
Palestinian-Israelis are a mostly Muslim minority group of 1.6 million citizens, constituting 21 percent of the country’s population. Eight of every 10 Palestinian citizens of Israel are Muslim, while the rest are Christians and Druze.
Calling Israeli democracy an “illusion”, Shehadeh says Palestinian-Israeli representatives in the Knesset are always under attack from their Zionist colleagues.
“There’s an atmosphere that this parliament belongs only to a part of the citizens. That it belongs only to the Jews. And we, the indigenous population, are not considered part of their group,” he says.
Politically motivated campaign
On June 30, the Knesset House Committee, which deals with parliamentary rules and rights of its members, voted 14-2 to advance a motion to expel Odeh.
“This is a fascist and racist move… The fight is between equality and Jewish supremacy, and we will never give up that fight,” Odeh wrote in a social media post after the vote.
The campaign to expel Odeh began early this year when he expressed hope for the release of both Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
Critics — led by Likud Avichai Boaron, a Jewish member of the Knesset — accused Odeh of equating hostages with “terrorists,” garnering 70 signatures to initiate expulsion proceedings.
This expulsion move, which requires 90 votes in parliament to succeed, seems to be in clear violation of Israel’s Basic Law, a set of quasi-constitutional laws that Israel uses in place of a proper constitution.
A Knesset member can be expelled only if they explicitly support armed struggle against the state of Israel — something legal experts say Odeh did not do.
The Adalah, an independent human rights organisation and legal centre in Israel, says the process to expel Odeh from the Knesset is part of an “inciteful, politically motivated campaign” aimed at delegitimising and eliminating Palestinian representation from the Israeli legislature.
Shehadeh says Palestinian-Israeli members of the Knesset have been harassed, hounded and chased away since 1984 when they were first allowed to establish their own parties.
“There has been incitement against our political parties, against our representatives. Sometimes, we are attacked physically. We are attacked verbally all the time,” he says.
Human rights organisations accuse Israel of treating the Palestinian Israelis as second-class citizens and practising “systematic and institutionalised discrimination”.
Palestinian-Israeli legislators have routinely faced relentless scrutiny at the hands of their Jewish colleagues. For example, Azmi Bishara, founder of the Balad party, went into exile in 2007 after being accused of aiding Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War. He now lives in Qatar.
Similarly, Haneen Zoabi, another member of the Knesset from Balad, was suspended for six months in 2014 for alleged incitement to violence. She upset right-wing colleagues by writing articles that her detractors interpreted as “advice to Hamas” on how to defeat Israel. She faced death threats before ultimately leaving the Knesset in 2019.
Knesset members Ahmad Tibi and Aida Touma-Suleiman, both vocal critics of the Israeli occupation, faced suspensions at different times for criticising Israeli policies in Gaza and occupied Palestinian territories.
Harassment under legal cover
The legal mechanism to enable the expulsion of lawmakers from the Knesset was instituted through the 2016 Suspension Law.
The law, which lets 90 members of the Knesset oust any of their colleagues on mere allegations of incitement or suspected support for armed struggle, was widely criticised as targeting Palestinian-Israeli lawmakers.
The law has opened the door to the “authoritarian control” of the Knesset by allowing its members to oust their colleagues for any “politically-motivated reason” and “without any substantive process”.
More recent legislative proposals aim at lowering the threshold for disqualifying candidates from running for office, targeting Palestinian-Israeli parties for actions like visiting Palestinian prisoners’ families.
The Central Elections Committee, which carries out elections for the Knesset, has repeatedly attempted to ban Palestinian-Israeli candidates, though the Supreme Court sometimes overturn these bans.
Shehadeh says these mechanisms expose Israel’s democratic facade. “Israel is not a normal state. There is no real democracy,” he says.
The reason for the hounding of Palestinian-Israeli lawmakers is that the state of Israel is “built on Jewish superiority”, he says. The Palestinian-Israeli lawmakers strive for equality, which is considered “extreme” by a society increasingly dominated by a right-wing ideology.
Inciting people against Palestinian-Israeli members of the Knesset garners more votes and media attention. “When they spread hatred against us, it brings them a lot of media coverage, more supporters, more followers,” Shehadeh says.
Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich’s remarks in 2021 that Palestinian-Israeli lawmakers were in the legislature “by mistake” as the country’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, “did not finish the job” went unchallenged, which shows the extent to which racist rhetoric has been normalised in Israel, he says.
The consequences extend beyond the Knesset. “(Palestinian-Israeli members) of the Knesset are attacked by Israeli police in all demonstrations. They push us, they attack us physically. They hit us,” he says.
A January 2025 UK Parliament motion condemned the targeting of Palestinian-Israeli members of the Knesset as evidence of an “ethnocratic, apartheid state”.
Amnesty International also condemned discriminatory regulations, noting that inflammatory rhetoric labels Palestinian-Israeli members of the Knesset as “traitors” to delegitimise their work.
“They don’t want to have our voice in the parliament,” Shehadeh says.
