Birth: 25/7/1955 Death:NULL/NULL/NULL
Born in Shfa Amer on 25 July 1955 to a family originally from the (destroyed) village of Safourya; enrolled at Tel Aviv University and graduated with a BA in Mathematics; Chairman of the Arab Student Committee at Tel Aviv University; co-founder of the General Union of Arab University Students and its elected head; was part of the Jewish-Arab Campus Movement and of the committee against the Lebanon War; member in the politburo of the Israeli Communist Party; Board of Directors member of Al-Ittihad newspaper and the Emile Touma Research Center; coordinator of the Committee for the Defense of Arab Land inside Israel; active in the Committee for the Relief of Palestinians (following the eruption of the first Intifada in 1987); member of the International Council for Peace in the Middle East; elected Sec.-Gen. of the Hadash party (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) in 1992 and made its chairman in 1999; elected Hadash representative in the Knesset in 1999 and 2003; Deputy Speaker of the 16th Knesset; was re-elected to the 17th Knesset in March 2006 and serves as Member of the House, Finance, and Public Petitions Committees as well as the Lobby for Jerusalem and the Social-Environmental Lobby.
