The Electoral Council of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) elected on Saturday, August 13, the Front’s first four candidates to run for the upcoming general elections for the 25th Knesset scheduled to take place on November 1.
For the upcoming elections, the leader of Hadash, MK Ayman Odeh was reelected to continue his leadership of the Joint List. The other three candidates running in the first four places in Hadash’s list are current MKs Aida Touma-Suleiman, Ofer Cassif and Youssef Atawne, a teacher resident of the Negev and a former union activist who served as a member of the Knesset for the Joint List between October 2017 and February 2018
Out of the Council’s 940 members, 530 cast their vote in the faction’s primary elections, with 75 percent voting for Odeh. Touma-Sliman has been reelected to the second slot with 52 percent of the votes, beating out Kufr Yassif Mayor Att. Shadi Shweiri. The two had to compete in a second round of voting, after none of them received more than 50 percent of the votes that are required to secure a slot, according to the factions’ rules. Cassif was reelected to the third slot with 67 percent of the votes and Atawne with 55 percent.
Former MK Youssef Atawne, MK Ofer Cassif and MK Aida Touma-Slima during the Electoral Council of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) held on Saturday, August 13, 2022 (Photo: Zo Haderech)
In the previous general elections for the 24th Knesset Hadash ran as part of the Joint List which won a total of six seats in the 120-seat Knesset, three of whom were nominated by Hadash.
Hadash’s electoral platform calls for: an end to Israel’s occupation of all Palestinian territories conquered in the June 1967 war as well as the Golan Heights taken from Syria, and for achieving a just, comprehensive, and stable peace between Israel and an independent Palestinian state to be created in those same occupied Palestinian territories; the protection of workers’ rights; the development of advanced and egalitarian social services (health, education, housing, welfare, culture, and sports), and for full equality for the Arab-Palestinian national minority in Israel.
Among Hadash’s additional goals are: the eradication of ethnic discrimination in all fields; the defense of the interests of residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods and development towns; the protection of democratic freedoms in Israeli society; full equality between the sexes in all fields; the protection of the environment and environmental justice; and the eradication of all nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons in Israel and throughout the Middle East.
Source: Communist Party of Israel