JERUSALEM—An effort by the right-wing parties in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to expel Ayman Odeh failed Monday evening, July 14. Odeh is a Palestinian MK and the longtime head of Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), a coalition rooted in the Israeli Communist Party and composed largely of Palestinian and Jewish leftists.
The scheme, spearheaded by lawmakers of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and its allies, garnered only 73 out of the required 90 votes. Fifteen members voted against, and multiple opposition MKs refused to vote. The ultra-Orthodox members of the United Torah Judaism party boycotted, as did those of the centrist Blue and White and Yesh Atid parties. The Haredi party Shas and the Zionist expansionist Yisrael Beiteinu party supported the motion. Labor, the United Arab List, Hadash, and MK Alon Shuster of Blue and White voted against.
Expelling a member of the Knesset requires a supermajority of 90 out of 120 votes to pass. Last month, the Knesset House Committee approved lawmakers’ statutory 70-signature petition, which included at least 10 signatures from the opposition.
Responding to the failed effort to expel him from the Knesset, Odeh declared that “the despicable and fascist move against me has failed.”
On X, he wrote: “We will stand firm against fascism, and fight for democracy, for equality, and for peace. From here, we must liberate both peoples from the yoke of occupation. Because we were all born free!”
However, Hadash MK Aida Touma-Sliman warned that while “the attempt to expel Ayman Odeh has failed, the attack on our political existence continues.”
The right wing, she said, “wants to silence our voice that speaks out against the war, against the occupation, and for just peace.” Touma-Sliman described the expulsion plot as an effort to “send a message: If you refuse to fall in line with the chauvinist consensus, you will be punished. But that message didn’t pass. Not today.”
Earlier, at a faction meeting in the Knesset, leaders of Hadash criticized the push to oust their chairman, calling the effort racist and anti-democratic and framing opposition to it as part of a broader battle against fascism, war, and occupation.
Odeh compared the struggle to the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution, whose anniversary was marked on the same day. “Just as the French won at the Bastille, we will win our Bastille,” he declared. “There is a real opportunity here to build a wide Arab-Jewish coalition against fascism and occupation.”
He posed a challenge: “Will fascism succeed in conquering the center, or will we succeed in recruiting it to stand with us? This is a fight between democracy and fascism, equality and oppression, between those who think only one people can live between the river and the sea instead of two.”
Odeh urged allies to “strengthen, widen, and deepen our coalition on the basis of equality and shared values.”
MK Ahmad Tibi, who heads the Ta’al party (Arab Movement for Renewal), called the impeachment effort “a racist and anti-democratic process.” Tibi slammed the push to oust Odeh as deeply hypocritical, pointing out that some of the very ministers condemning him, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, have themselves called to “flatten” Gaza and worse.
“Those who have condemned Odeh have themselves called for the murder of children, to destroy Gaza,” he said.
On Monday afternoon, hundreds of Jews and Arabs protested in support of Odeh outside the Knesset in Jerusalem. In the morning, protesters barricaded themselves in the Justice Ministry building, protesting what they called the Netanyahu coalition’s “damage to the foundations of Israeli democracy.”
They were brutally removed by Border Police. One protester has been detained so far, according to a group of lawyers that represent imprisoned anti-government demonstrators.
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