Who is Ayman Odeh, Palestinian MK Facing Impeachment after Knesset Vote?
By Palestine Chronicle Staff
In November last year, Odeh was forcibly removed from the Knesset after he accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a “serial killer of peace.”
A parliamentary committee in the Israeli Knesset voted on Monday to advance the impeachment of Palestinian lawmaker Ayman Odeh over remarks he made welcoming the release of Palestinian detainees.
According to Israel’s Channel 12, cited by the Anadolu news agency, lawmakers in the Knesset House Committee voted 12-2 in favor of the impeachment of Odeh, head of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash).
“This is a fascist and racist move, backed by the coalition and much of the opposition. The fight is between equality and Jewish supremacy, and we will never give up that fight,” Odeh said on X.
“They want to brand our call for equality, peace, and justice as extreme, but in truth, it is the most just and most human position in the world,” he continued.
Odeh added, “We will not back down. We will stand firm, for all of us, Jews and Palestinians alike. Because today it’s me, and tomorrow it’s you.”
The motion will now move to the Knesset’s plenary session for a majority vote of 90 members out of 120 to complete Odeh’s impeachment, Anadolu reported.
Even if his impeachment is approved, the Arab MK will still be able to file a petition against the decision with the Supreme Court.
Palestinians of 1948 (Arabs inside Israel) constitute 21 percent of Israel’s nearly 10 million population, according to the report.
Law Studies
Born in 1975 and raised in the city of Haifa, Odeh studied law at Mihai Eminescu University and successfully passed the Israeli Bar Association’s qualifying exams in 2001, according to his website.
Odeh is the head of the Joint List, the third-largest party in the current Knesset.
Between the years 1998-2003 Odeh represented the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) in the Haifa City Council, and between 2003-2006 worked as a project director for Sikkuy – the Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality.
A former board member of the Al-Midan Theater, Odeh has been serving as the Secretary-General of Hadash since 2006, and is currently a member of the Knesset House Committee, the Knesset Committee on Labor, Welfare and Health, the Mahmoud Darwish Foundation’s board of directors, as well as the chairman of the Cultural Affairs parliamentary group, his bio states.
The author of three monographs, Odeh partook in the formulation of, and is a signatory to the High Follow-Up Committee’s Vision Documents, Mada Al Carmel’s Haifa Declaration and rights group Adalah’s Democratic Constitution document.
Netanyahu ‘a Killer of Peace’
Odeh was listed among Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2015.
Adalah called the move to expel Odeh as “the clearest and nd most direct evidence that this is part of an inciteful, politically motivated campaign to delegitimize and eliminate Palestinian representation from the Israeli legislature.”
In November last year, Odeh was forcibly removed from the Knesset after he accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a “serial killer of peace.”
He stated that there are “35,055 orphaned babies in Gaza,” adding that the “blood of all of them will haunt you.”
In May 2025, he condemned Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza, saying that after the killing of “53,000 residents” of the enclave as well as the destruction of universities and hospitals, “there is no political win.”
(PC, Anadolu)
So you can get impeached for telling the truth, but not for corruption it seems. The Knesset most likely is representative of the majority of Jewish israelis who are too heavily invested in lies for it to work any other way.