Jamal Zahalka

Zahalka is a resident of Kafr Qara.[1] While in 12th grade, he was arrested and convicted for involvement in a PLO organization in the village, receiving a two-year prison sentence.[1] He completed his matriculation certificate while imprisoned and subsequently studied pharmacy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[1]

In Jerusalem, he met Azmi Bishara and became active in the communist party Rakah and the Arab-Jewish student group Campus.[1] After his first degree, he continued studying pharmacy while remaining involved in campus politics.[1] Unable to find work as a pharmacist, he later pursued doctoral studies; his dissertation concerned the effect of hashish’s active ingredient on the human body.[1]

In 1989, Zahalka and Azmi Bishara founded the Jewish-Arab Equality Covenant movement, which advocated a binational state.[1] Zahalka also helped establish the Balad parliamentary faction in 1995.[1] For the three years preceding his parliamentary career, he served as director-general of Al-Ahali, an organization of Arab farmers.[1]

Balad was founded as a party in 1996 by Bishara.[6] Its platform advocated an Israel that was not Jewish in character, described as a state of all its citizens, together with the return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants and Arab autonomy in fields including culture and education.[6] These were the party’s positions, rather than a record of Zahalka’s personal stance on every element of its platform.[6]

Zahalka first entered the Knesset in 2003, having occupied second place on Balad’s candidate list.[1] He was among the party’s elected members in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th Knessets, following the elections of 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2013 respectively.[7] After Bishara resigned as Balad leader in 2007, Zahalka became leader of its Knesset faction.[8] He headed Balad’s list ahead of the 18th Knesset election and was listed first among its three elected members in 2009.[1][9]

In parliament, Zahalka initiated an amendment to the Municipalities Ordinance providing for the removal of council members with specified long-term arrears in municipal tax or water payments.[1] He belonged to the Knesset caucus for local government and served on the Education, Culture and Sports Committee and the Committee on the War Against Drugs.[1] During the 18th Knesset, he was among the initiators of legislation to cancel the merger of Baqa and Jatt.[1]

Zahalka again headed Balad’s candidate slate in the 2013 election, when the party won three seats.[10] Ahead of the 2015 election, Balad joined the Joint List after an increase in the electoral threshold threatened to leave several smaller Arab parties without parliamentary representation.[6] Zahalka later said that he helped lead the Joint List’s establishment and cooperation among Arab factions.[4]

In early November 2016, Zahalka submitted legislation seeking recognition of Israel’s Arab minority as a national minority, with other Joint List members joining as sponsors.[3] The bill proposed independent management of cultural affairs, appropriate representation in state institutions, and the right to establish representative political institutions and participate in decisions affecting the minority.[3] It also proposed educational measures to foster Arab history, heritage, and culture.[3]

The proposal included restrictions on legislation contradicting its provisions and on the use of emergency regulations to change or repeal it.[3] Explaining his purpose, Zahalka said the bill drew on international law and a conception of human rights extending beyond civil rights to a right of belonging. He said its goal was to defend the Arab minority from what he characterized as majority ruthlessness.[3] The Knesset rejected the proposal at its preliminary reading by 77 votes to 19.[3]

In December 2018, Zahalka announced that he would not seek reelection, saying he was proud of the accomplishments of his 16 years in the Knesset and initially intended to remain Balad chairman.[11] In remarks reported in early 2019, he emphasized his role in establishing the Joint List and cooperation among Arab factions.[4] He said that leaving parliament did not mean leaving public life and identified justice, freedom, equality, opposition to hatred and racism, ending the occupation, and achieving a just peace as his continuing aims.[4]

At Balad’s 2019 leadership conference, attended by 500 delegates, Mtanes Shehadeh was elected to replace Zahalka as chairman, defeating Ashraf Kurtam by 191 votes to 149.[2] Zahalka did not seek a place on the party’s next Knesset list.[2]

By June 2026, Zahalka chaired the High Follow-Up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel, an umbrella body representing political currents and parties in Arab society.[5] He had been elected chairman in November 2025 and sought broader Jewish-Arab participation and greater pressure on the government, including through a possible three-day general strike.[12] The committee pursued Hebrew-language outreach, and several Israeli universities supported a protest.[12]

At a January 2026 demonstration, Zahalka blamed the government and police for the spread of violent crime, arguing that allowing criminals to operate without interruption enabled criminal organizations to flourish.[13] The protests followed a record 252 Arab citizens killed in violent-crime-related incidents in 2025, with another 16 Arab homicide victims reported in the first two weeks of 2026.[13]

Zahalka’s parliamentary record encompassed municipal accountability, the organization of local government, education, and proposals for collective Arab minority rights.[1][3] His leadership of Balad and role in the Joint List connected his career to cooperation among Arab parties responding to the increased electoral threshold.[6][4] After leaving parliament, his chairmanship of the High Follow-Up Committee placed him in a broader representative role within Arab society in Israel.[5]

In September 2006, after the conflict in Lebanon, Zahalka visited Syria and Lebanon with fellow MKs Azmi Bishara and Wasal Taha, prompting the attorney general to order a criminal investigation.[14] A 2001 law prohibited parliamentarians from visiting designated enemy states without the interior minister’s permission; the investigation remained ongoing at the end of 2006, and no action had been taken to prevent their departure from Israel.[14] Zahalka described the Syria visit as an expression of solidarity and an opportunity to discuss regional developments.[15] In 2007, he also defended Bishara against treason accusations, arguing that the allegations were politically motivated and that Bishara was being treated as guilty before being proven innocent.[8]

In January 2009, the Central Elections Committee voted 26–3, with one abstention, to disqualify Balad from the election following petitions alleging that it rejected Israel as the Jewish homeland and advocated armed conflict against it.[16] Zahalka called the decision politically motivated; the Supreme Court subsequently overturned the disqualification and restored Balad to the election.[16][17]

Zahalka’s positions on Israel’s national identity and his comparisons with apartheid South Africa also drew attention.[18][19] In a commentary, Barak M. Seener quoted him saying that Balad had “always opposed the definition of Israel as a Jewish state,” and described a rally Zahalka held with Sheikh Raed Salah against Israeli national service.[18] Zahalka called for sanctions on Israel in a 2012 opinion piece and, in 2013, described Israel as “a democracy for Jews, not Arabs,” comparing it with apartheid South Africa while saying it was not an exact copy.[20][19]

During a 2014 Knesset committee discussion of police conduct following the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers and subsequent unrest after an Arab teenager’s killing by Jewish extremists, Zahalka accused Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino of having hands “covered in blood.”[21] He also said police had no business entering the Temple Mount compound, which he described as occupied territory; committee chair Miri Regev ordered his removal after he refused to apologize.[21]

In February 2016, Zahalka, Hanin Zoabi, and Basel Ghattas met relatives of Palestinian terrorists killed during a wave of attacks and whose bodies were being held by Israel, to discuss their return for burial; the lawmakers also observed a minute of silence.[22] The meeting drew political condemnation.[22] Zahalka denied supporting the attacks, described the silence as a customary commemoration of all the dead, and said the Joint List opposed harming innocent people, but declined to condemn the terrorists individually and called them “victims of the occupation.”[23] The Knesset Ethics Committee imposed a two-month suspension from plenary sessions on Zahalka; Zoabi and Ghattas received four-month suspensions.[24]

In January 2018, police said they had assembled evidence supporting prosecution recommendations against Zahalka and other senior Balad figures over alleged fraud, forgery, and money laundering linked to financial reports for the 2013 and 2015 elections.[25] The suspicions concerned falsified documents allegedly used to conceal unlawful donations; Zahalka called the investigation politically motivated and predicted it would come to nothing.[25] The report concerned police allegations and recommendations, not a court finding.[25]