“The [Arab] public has no hope, they understand that the prime minister and the rest of the government ministers have abandoned them,” said Hadash-Ta’al MK Aida Touma-Sliman, who marched in the Sakhnin demonstration.
Speaking to The Times of Israel, she said the unprecedented number of people in attendance was only possible after the end of the two-year war in Gaza. As long as the war continued, she said, the Arab public “felt it was hard to talk about their own hardships.”
“Ben Gvir is succeeding in advancing a policy in which criminal organizations are a subcontractor for him,” she claimed. “He stands by and watches how criminal organizations control our lives and frighten the public. Rather than having political goals, they have turned us into people who are just trying to survive.”
After the march concluded in Sakhnin, national and local Arab leaders met in the local city hall to discuss how to sustain the momentum that led to the strike and unprecedented demonstration, which Zahalka boasted had 100,000 attendees.