MK Aida Touma-Suleiman (Joint Arab List) on Sunday told Reshet Bet radio: “I don’t think the Law of Return is necessary. Anyone who wanted to return to Israel has already arrived. Anyone who chose to be in the US or to be French – has chosen. The law is superfluous.”
MK Suleiman revealed that Blue&White has been sending out feelers regarding her party’s supporting a move to establish a minority government and ousting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but stressed that her party is in no hurry to join a government led by Benny Gantz. She stressed that “you can’t build anything based on feelers. There needs to be a formal and respectful notification.”
In addition, Suleiman denied getting any feelers from the Likud either. “Only the day before, Netanyahu erased us,” she said, referring to last week’s talk by the Likud chairman in which he refused to include the Joint Arab List as a legitimate participant in coalition politics.
“In any other country there would be an outcry,” Suleiman said. “But what was Gantz’s reaction? Have a glass of water? What did he say yesterday? They are lepers but you touched them first?” (that was a reference to the list read out by Gantz Saturday night of occasions on which Netanyahu himself had collaborated with the Arab list – DI).
“We have been taken out of the civil collective of Israel. We were not mentioned by even one word. If that is the definition of a Jewish state, then, yes, I want it to change,” she said.
Aida Touma-Suleiman is a Christian Arab who lives in Acre. In 1992, She founded the Arab feminist group Women Against Violence, and was chief editor of the Communist Party’s newspaper Al-Ittihad. In 2015, she was the fourth Israeli Arab woman to be elected to the Knesset. As chair of the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, MK Suleiman refused to allow a debate on the issues facing female IDF soldiers.
“I didn’t serve in the military, there’s no one in my vicinity who is serving in the military, I don’t know what the problems are there and it’s not on my agenda,” she told Channel 2 News in 2016. “I’m interested in women who are discriminated against and in poor women, women in public housing. The issue of female soldiers is not my issue.”