Haneen, the Arab MP Israelis love to hate
Palestinian citizens of Israel have been ‘wiped off the map,’ she says
L ove her or loathe her, Palestinian MP in Israel, Haneen Zoabi, leaves few people indifferent. Opponents see her as the enemy within, but for others she’s a passionate defender of the Palestinian cause.
In the six years since she entered the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, she has become the most controversial figure on the Israeli political scene and a common face inside courtrooms.
Four times she has been called on to respond to accusations of “hostility” towards the regime.
And as a general election approaches — the second in just over two years — she has once again dodged another right-wing attempt to bar her from standing, with the Supreme Court overruling a ban imposed by the Central Elections Committee.
An MP with the secular Balad party, she holds the seventh slot on the newly formed Joint Arab List, a united slate which includes representatives from across the political spectrum, from Communists to Islamists.
Born in Nazareth, the elegant 45-year-old has forged a reputation as an outspoken politician willing to say the unthinkable regardless of the consequences.
And she has pledged to continue bringing the Palestinian struggle to end the occupation to the heart of the Israeli political system.
“Send Haneen back to Jenin!” cry her adversaries.
“This is my land. I am not a colonist. I will stay in my home,” she hits back at those calling for her to leave the country and go and live in the occupied West Bank or the Gaza Strip.
Haneen, a descendant of Palestinians who stayed on their land when the Israeli regime was established in 1948, refuses to back down.
Political outcast
“Our presence in parliament is a way of making visible the Palestinian Arabs living in Israel. This country acts like we don’t exist,” she says.
“They treat the [West Bank and Gaza] Palestinians as enemies, but they treat us as if we were wiped off the map.”
Haneen, who has a degree in philosophy and an MA in media and communications, has become the most well-known Palestinian personality in Israel, largely because she doesn’t mince her words.
When she was first sworn in as an MP in 2009, she walked out of the plenum before they sang the Israeli national anthem “in order not to be a hypocrite” by staying for an anthem “that does not represent me”.
Since that moment, she has been a political outcast.
One by one, she has taken on Israel’s taboos, most recently taking flak for her refusal to recognise the so-called “Jewish character” of the regime.
This flashpoint issue played a role in the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and the decision to call an election on March 17.