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Hamad Amar
Last update - 12:56 09/02/2009
Meet Hamad Amar, Yisrael Beiteinu's Druze candidate
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Israel News, Druze 

Israeli Druze activist Hamad Amar has been criss-crossing Israel's Druze communities in a bid to garner support for the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party ahead of Tuesday's elections. The party has stirred controversy for its election slogan "no loyalty, no citizenship", believed to be directed at Israeli Arabs whose loyalty to Israel is viewed as questionable.

Click here for exclusive Haaretz coverage of the elections in Israel

On Sunday, Amar, who holds the number 12 spot on Yisrael Beitenu's list, visited Dilyat al-Carmel with party head Avigdor Lieberman, before touring a half a dozen more villages before finally returning home around midnight.
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Amar has a very solid chance of joining the Knesset as an MK for Yisrael Beitenu, as the party is expected to get well over 12 seats, and possibly as many as 18 or 20.

Lieberman, whom polls show winning 15 seats or more, wants to annex settlements and place towns that house some of Israel's 20-percent Arab minority on the other side of a new border.

Amar lives in the al-Fuar neighborhood of Shfaram, far from the center of the mixed Muslim, Christian, and Druze Israeli-Arab city, a distance that is wrapped in the history of the town, and Israel.

Most of the residents of the neighborhood are the sons of families who moved to Shfaram after 1948, many of them from villages that were destroyed by the nascent Israeli state. Many of these families had included fighters who battled Israel during the War of Independence, with Amar's family reported made up of Druze fighters originally from Syria.

Amar was the founder of Israel's Druze youth movement and has been active in Israeli politics for years. A man of actions, not words, he nonetheless had much to say about the controversy surrounding the appointment of extreme rightist Baruch Marzel to serve as an election day monitor in the Israeli-Arab city of Umm al-Fahm.

"You're going to compare Lieberman to Marzel? How is this comparison possible?," Amar said.

Even though Amar is outspoken in his support of Yisrael Beitenu, he says signs supporting the party are only hung in the Druze neighborhoods, so as not to cause offense.

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