Who they are
Iman Khatib-Yassin is a social worker and the first religious Muslim woman to sit in the Knesset. She was born in Arraba in the Lower Galilee in 1964 and took a bachelor’s degree at the University of Haifa and a master’s in women and gender studies at Tel Aviv University. She is a graduate of the Mandel Institute for Educational Leadership, and did its practical training in the Knesset committee on the status of women.
She worked in prisoner rehabilitation and founded a centre for girls in distress in Nazareth, running it for nine years. She then spent some two decades running community centres, building the one in Yafa an-Naseriyye and later taking on Zemer as well. She stood for the Joint List in 2019 without being elected and got in the following year. When Ra’am broke away she again missed out, returning four months later on the death of MK Said Alharumi. In the Knesset she has founded lobbies on closing the gaps in the Arab local authorities and on Arab women’s employment, and she is deputy chair of Ra’am’s Shura Council.
The Knesset ethics committee suspended her for a month and docked two weeks’ pay over remarks in a television interview on 5 November 2023 disputing parts of the account of the 7 October attack. She said she had not watched the footage herself, and told the plenum that what Hamas did contradicted her values as a person and as a religious Muslim woman.
Positions and record
Welfare: Social services in Arab society; ran a centre for at-risk girls in Nazareth for nine years.
Women: Employment and protection from violence.
Representation: Broke a symbolic barrier in Israeli politics.
Where they stand
Holds the party line on every issue.