Basel Ghattas

Basel Ghattas was born in 1956 in Nazareth

Ghattas was born in 1956 to an Orthodox Christian Arab family from Rameh in the Galilee. His father was a history teacher and a communist activist. As a high school student he founded the National Committee of Arab High School Students with his cousin Azmi Bishara.

He began studying environmental engineering at the Technion in 1974 and helped found an Arab student group there. He was elected to the Rameh council for Rakah in 1978 and became deputy head of the council in 1983. He was expelled from the party in 1990 after criticizing its pro-Soviet line, and he earned a PhD from the Technion in 1995.

He helped found the Brit HaShivyon movement in 1992 and Balad in 1995. He then headed the Galilee Society, a group working on health and environment in Arab communities. In 2007 he started publishing Malakom, a business magazine for the Arab community.

He entered the Knesset in 2013 on the Balad list and was reelected in 2015 on the Joint List. In 2015 he joined a flotilla to Gaza that the Israeli Navy stopped, and in 2016 the ethics committee suspended him for 4 months after a meeting with families of attackers.

In December 2016 he was filmed smuggling phones to security prisoners, gave up his immunity and was arrested. He resigned from the Knesset in 2017 and was sentenced to 2 years in prison. He was released in May 2019.