Politicsאיימן עודה

Ayman Odeh

Ayman Odeh is an Israeli Arab lawyer and politician who has served in the Knesset since 2015 and led the Hadash party.

born 1975Leading Hadash and the Joint ListAdvocacy for Arab citizens' rightsRecognition of Negev Bedouin villages

Born: 1 January 1975, Haifa
Occupation: lawyer, politician, advocate, jurist
Party: Hadash, Joint List, Hadash-Ta'al
Education: Nicolae Titulescu University

Ayman Odeh was born in 1975 in Haifa

Odeh was born in Haifa in 1975 and grew up in the city's Kababir neighborhood. His father was a construction worker. His family was Muslim, but he attended a Christian school.

He studied law at the University of Craiova in Romania from 1993 to 1997 and earned a law degree. In 2001 he was certified to practice law in Israel. As a youth he was active in the Young Communist League of Israel.

He represented Hadash on the Haifa City Council and became the party's secretary-general in 2006. In 2013 he was sixth on the Hadash list but did not enter the Knesset. In January 2015 he was chosen to lead Hadash and headed the Joint List, which won him a seat in the 20th Knesset.

In 2017 he was injured in the head during a protest against home demolitions in Umm al-Hiran. In July 2025 a Knesset vote to expel him failed, with 73 in favor and a threshold of 90 required. In May 2023 he announced he would retire at the end of his term, and Yousef Jabareen replaced him as Hadash chairman in May 2026.