PRESS RELEASE

Israeli Elections: The French Communist Party congratulates the Joint List and Hadash

Early parliamentary elections held in Israel gave a clear victory to the sitting Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who carried the ultra-nationalist, fundamentalist far right by repeatedly fanning the flames of fear and hatred in his campaign statements as voting day neared. The Likud has five more seats that Isaac Herzog’s list, 29 and 24 seats, respectively.

The very good news comes from the Joint List, arriving in third place, led by the Israeli communist Ayman Odeh, who was able to put together a single ticket which included Jewish and Arab Israeli, communist, and Arab nationalist candidates.

The Joint List achieved a challenging objective by getting out the Arab Israeli vote, overcoming the trend of abstention. The 14 Joint List MPs will be the voice of peace, social justice and democracy in the Knesset, where hawks and proponents of settlement expansion prevail.

These MPs will need all of our support as well as the international solidarity of democrats and progressives in the upcoming period; Netanyahu’s assertion that there would be no Palestinian State in the event of his re-election certainly is a harbinger of an even harder line in Israeli war and settlement policies.

The French Communist Party extends warm congratulations to Hadash for the re-election of MPs and the election of a fifth Member from the communist party: Ayman Odeh, Aida Touma-Sliman, Dov Khenin, Youssef Jabareen and Abdallah Abu-Maarof. We also congratulate their fellow MPs on their election: Masud Ghnaim, Jamal Zahalka, Ahmad Tibi, Abd al-Hakim Hajj Yahya, Haneen Zoabi, Taleb Abu Arar, Basel Ghattas, Osama Saadi, Juma Azbarga.

French Communist Party,

Paris, March 18^th, 2015.