Israeli far-right fail to expel Palestinian lawmaker Ayman Odeh over Gaza remarks

An attempt by Israel's far-right to expel Palestinian MK Ayman Odeh from the Knesset failed on Monday after a number of opposition lawmakers boycotted the vote.

Only 73 MKs supported the motion, falling short of the 90 votes required to expel a sitting member of the assembly.

Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid and Benny Gantz's Blue and White - National Unity parties abstained, as did the ultra-orthodox United Torah Judaism, a member of the governing coalition.

Avihai Boaron, a far-right settler activist and MK in Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party, had brought impeachment proceedings against Odeh, accusing him of supporting terrorism for praising the release of Palestinian detainees in a social media post.

"I am happy about the release of the abductees and the prisoners. From here, both peoples must be freed from the yoke of the occupation. We are all free," Odeh wrote on X earlier this year.

Others have accused him of "terrorism" for criticising the conduct of the Israeli military in Gaza, where it has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians since 2023 and reduced most of the territory to rubble.

Odeh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and head of the left-wing Hadash-Ta'al alliance, was defiant following the vote.

"With great pride, I can say: the fascists failed", he wrote in a post on X.

"We will continue to stand tall against fascism, against the war of annihilation, and against the occupation."

Attorney Hassan Jabareen, the general director of Israeli human rights organisation Adalah and legal counsel for Odeh, said the move to unseat the lawmaker set a "terrifying precedent".

"The Knesset may not have reached the numbers to expel MK Ayman Odeh, but the meaning is no less chilling," he said.

He added: "This was not a legal process—it was a racist, fascist spectacle of incitement, meant to punish Odeh for his principled position against Israeli occupation, repression, and violence. It flagrantly violated Israeli law and shredded the most basic legal standards."

Boaron called it a "dark day" and an "indelible stain on the face of the Knesset".

Far-right lawmakers shouted "terrorist" and "shame on you" at Odeh as he went to speak in the assembly ahead of the vote.

"Out, out, all the supporters of terror out," shouted extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Likud MKs Tally Gotliv and Ofir Katz described him as an "enemy".

"Only together will we defeat fascism and Kahanism and build a future of peace and democracy," Odeh said from the podium, referring to the extremist followers of the late Jewish supremacist rabbi Meir Kahane.

The ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties had both threatened to boycott the vote in protest at the government's push to draft Haredi men into the military, although Shas later sided with the government.

Odeh called the efforts to kick him out of the Knesset "disgraceful, dangerous, and profoundly anti-democratic" in an op-ed in Haaretz published ahead of the vote.

"It is yet another painful step in a systematic campaign to erase the political representation of Arab citizens of Israel and to silence every moral voice that dares to speak about equality, justice, democracy and peace," he wrote.

The Knesset House Committee held two hearings on the impeachment motion in June, where government and opposition MKs voted 14-2 in favour of his expulsion.

The assembly's legal advisor has said that Odeh's social media post does not provide any evidence of support for terrorism and is not sufficient for his expulsion.