Yousef Jabareen
A legal scholar and academic specializing in human rights and constitutional law, and a former Knesset member (2015-2021), Yousef Jabareen was elected chair of Hadash on 16 May 2026, succeeding Ayman Odeh. He leads the Joint List reconstituted with Ta'al and Balad for the 2026 election.
- Ideology
- Arab-Jewish left, socialist
- Current role
- Chair of Hadash, head of the Joint List
- Born
- February 23, 1972Umm al-Fahm
Key takeaways
- 01
Legal scholar (doctorate from Georgetown), former Hadash/Joint List Knesset member (2015-2021), specializing in human rights.
- 02
Elected chair of Hadash on 16 May 2026 with 82% of the vote in the internal election, succeeding Ayman Odeh.
- 03
Has led the Joint List reconstituted with Ta'al and Balad since 19 August 2026.
- 04
On 2 October 2026, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the disqualification of the Joint List, confirming its participation in the 27 October election.
Controversies
In 2018, the Knesset denied Yousef Jabareen permission to participate in a lecture tour in the United States organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization linked to the BDS movement. The Supreme Court upheld this ban on 24 June 2021.
On 23 September 2026, the Central Elections Committee voted to disqualify the Joint List from the election, a decision Jabareen denounced as an attempt to silence Arab political participation. On 2 October 2026, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned this disqualification, but that same day, Balad leader Sami Abu Shehadeh, third on the joint list, withdrew his own candidacy after the judges indicated that they would separately uphold his individual disqualification, on account of a 2023 article that they deemed deeply shocking.
Born on 23 February 1972 in Umm al-Fahm, Yousef Jabareen earned a bachelor's degree in law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1995), a master's degree at American University in Washington (1997), and then a doctorate at Georgetown University Law Center (2003). From 1997 to 2000, he headed the northern branch of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), then taught at the University of Haifa and Tel Aviv University (from 2004), as well as at Tel-Hai Academic College. He also heads Dirasat, the Arab Center for Law and Policy, in Nazareth.
A Knesset member for Hadash/the Joint List from 2015 to 2021, he chaired the Knesset Committee on the Rights of the Child during the 23rd Knesset and headed the Joint List's international relations committee. In 2018, the Knesset denied him permission to participate in a lecture tour in the United States organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization linked to the BDS movement. The Supreme Court upheld this ban on 24 June 2021.
On 16 May 2026, he was elected chair of Hadash with 82% of the vote in the internal election, succeeding Ayman Odeh, who did not run again because he failed to obtain the two-thirds support required by the party's rules. Knesset member Aida Touma-Suleiman also declined to run again. Jabareen immediately called for reviving the Joint List, declaring that this was “what the moment demands, and what our public calls for”. On 19 August 2026, Hadash, Ta'al and Balad reached an agreement on a joint list, headed by Jabareen (Hadash), followed by Ahmad Tibi (Ta'al), Sami Abu Shehadeh (Balad), Jafar Farah (Hadash), Bakhar Awawdeh (Balad) and Ofer Cassif (Hadash). On 23 September 2026, the Central Elections Committee voted to disqualify the Joint List from the 27 October election, a decision Jabareen denounced as an attempt to silence Arab political participation. On 2 October 2026, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the disqualification of the Joint List and Ra'am, and separately rejected, by 7 votes to 2, a request to disqualify Hadash Knesset member Ofer Cassif over separate remarks. That same day, however, Balad leader Abu Shehadeh withdrew his own candidacy after the judges indicated that a majority would uphold his individual disqualification, on account of an article of 8 October 2023 in which he described the previous day's attack as an “important historic event in military, political and strategic terms” and wrote that “if small, besieged Gaza could do this, others can do it more effectively”.
Ra'am, Mansour Abbas's party, has the official English name "United Arab List." This name sounds very close to the "Joint List." People often confuse them, but they are two completely separate parties, with different leaders, ideologies and election strategies.
The Joint List is an electoral alliance formed in 2015, after the electoral threshold was raised from 2% to 3.25%. It first brought together Hadash, Ta'al, Balad and Ra'am. In January 2021, Ra'am left the alliance to run on its own. It believed it could win more concrete gains for Arab society by staying independent. For the October 27, 2026, election, Hadash, Ta'al and Balad re-formed the Joint List on August 19, 2026. It is led by Yousef Jabareen (Hadash), with Ahmad Tibi (Ta'al) and Sami Abu Shehadeh (Balad). Ra'am stayed out of this alliance and is running alone. However, on September 11, 2026, it signed a surplus-vote agreement with the Joint List.
On substance, Ra'am comes from the southern branch of the Islamic Movement. It takes a pragmatic approach: it focuses on getting budgets and concrete programs for Arab society, even if that means working with right-wing or left-wing coalitions. The Joint List, by contrast, brings together three distinct movements: Hadash (communist roots, Arab-Jewish), Ta'al (secular, focused on civil rights) and Balad (strong Palestinian nationalism; in particular, it wants to turn Israel into a "state of all its citizens"). So it is less a single party than an electoral alliance of three ideologically different groups.