On November 4, Rula Daood became the first woman to apply to lead the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, an umbrella organization that advocates for Arab communities within Israel at the national level.
For Daood, the national co-director of the grassroots movement Standing Together, this would have been a step from activism into politics. "I wanted to bring a new face and a new agenda to the committee," she tells Haaretz. A change, she says, that is badly needed.
The chairman of the committee sets the political agenda for Arab Israeli citizens. It is the only elected position on the committee, which comprises of Arab Knesset members, local council heads and representatives of different streams in the Arab community. Until this weekend, the post was held by former Hadash MK Mohammed Barakeh for a decade. The election, which took place on Saturday, was won by Jamal Zahalka, former chairman of the Balad party.
"The Higher Committee is supposed to mobilize and organize the Arab minority in Israel," Daood, 40, said in an interview with Haaretz before Saturday's election. "It is a powerful place that could bring Palestinian rights forward, but it hasn't been using its power for the past 20 years."
The committee was founded when protests among Palestinians against then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin's right-wing government grew stronger – ultimately leading to the first intifada in the eighties. The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee was meant to function as a unifying independent political organization that would coordinate the political activities of various Israeli Arab nonprofits, advocacy groups and other organizations, leading to change at a national level for Arab and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
"227 Arab Israeli citizens were killed this year, and the feeling is that nobody really cares," Daood says, referring to the record-high rates of homicides and gun violence devastating Arab communities across Israel. Her candidacy was an expression of a wider change in the Arab communities and political establishment, struggling to become more diverse and inclusive to women.
Daood recalls that she made her decision to put in her candidacy during a protest in her hometown Kafr Yasif. "Many people were around me," she says. "Many young people and many women." In contrast, on the stage were only men. They were the only ones who would speak. "That was the moment I decided we need a change."
Some of the thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel that protested rising murder rates and the government's inaction, in Arabeh, northern Israel, earlier this month.
"The Higher Committee is supposed to mobilize and organize the Arab minority in Israel," says Rula Daood. "It could bring Palestinian rights forward, but it hasn't been using its power for the past 20 years."
During the past months, anger within the Arab community about the committees' lack of action against rising crime and murder rates, which continues to rise, especially among young people. At a demonstration on November 1 against the violence in the northern town of Arabeh, protesters reportedly tried to prevent the committees' officials, including then chairman Barakeh, from speaking.
The old guard
Since Daood has not been part of the committee, she needed to be endorsed by at least six municipalities. "I went to the mayors of different municipalities, and I got more than six supporters," Daood explains. But the day before the mayors had to finalize their choice of candidates, Daood got a call from a committee member telling her that one mayor withdrew his support for her.
At this point, Daood had six supporters left, still enough for her candidacy. But in the evening, her phone rang again – another mayor changed his mind. Later that night, she received a text message informing her that another mayor had withdrawn his endorsing signature, making it certain that Daood would not have enough votes.
To Daood it was clear that the mayors had been pressured to draw their votes. "The committee is very much controlled by old politics, people who have been holding their positions for decades." It seems they were afraid of the change, she speculates. "They feel threatened by a new face and a new agenda, speaking a different language, that can really stir things up. And they didn't want me to be there."
To her, the problem of leadership is not limited to the Arab political establishment in Israel. "There is a lack of leadership on the left that speaks about the change we need," Daood explains. "About the day after [the war], about real partnership between Israelis and Palestinians, about how we can change our reality." To her, it is clear that leaders must focus on what can be done instead of what cannot.
"Many people don't believe in what they can do," she says. "They don't believe they have the power." To her, the old political establishment represented by the committee cannot bring about change. "They don't have the most progressive kind of ideas. They don't believe in organizing, in working with communities and with people. This is what I wanted to change with my candidacy."
Standing Together co-directors Rula Daood, left, and Alon-Lee Green, holding signs that read, "We refuse to occupy Gaza."
'I was able to make some noise'
When the committee opened the registration for the elections and announced the names of the election committee, all eight members were men. While this was business as usual in the years before, this time, the committee faced backlash. Women's rights organizations and feminist activists spoke out against it.
"When I put my candidacy first, it made a lot of fuss. Nobody really expected it, and it moved many things," Daood says. "I was able to make some noise." Four more candidates entered the race, among them another woman: former MK and feminist activist Neveen Abu Rahmoun.
For Daood, who together with her Standing Together co-director Alon-Lee Green became international faces of joint Palestinian and Israeli resistance to the war in Gaza, leading the committee would have been the next step in her career. With a national election on the horizon, questions about her future have mounted. Today, she is still unsure about where she will go from here.
"I honestly don't know," she says. But there are things she is sure of: "I want to change politics. I want to make a change for my own people, but I also want the whole Israeli society to understand that I am a legitimate leader for both Jews and Palestinians in this land." She would love if this is possible to do through an organization like Standing Together, she says. "If your question is about the Knesset – Maybe. Probably. Really, I don't know."
The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee did not respond to Haaretz's request for comment.
More articles by Vera Weidenbach.
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