Hadash chairman and former lawmaker Issam Makhoul, who served as a Member of Knesset from 1999 until 2006, has died on Friday, December 26, at the age of 72. He is survived by his wife, Suad, and their two children.

“Palestine State, now!”, Issam Makhoul during the last Hadash National Convention, October 25, 2025 (Photo: Zo Haderekh)

Makhoul, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) was a former Secretary General of the party. In late 2003 he was the target of a failed assassination attempt, when racists planted a car bomb on his car. The bomb exploded beneath his vehicle as his wife was backing it out of their driveway. In 2005, Alexander Rabinovitch and Eliran Golan were convicted of trying to murder Communist leading activists and Arab public officials, including Makhoul.

Makhoul studied philosophy and sociology at the University of Haifa, gaining an MA. During his time at university, he also became the first chairman of the National Union of Arab Students since its establishment in 1976 and was a leading member of Jewish-Arab Campus students’ movement. After graduating he worked as a sociologist and was the chairman of the Emil Touma Institute for Political and Historical Research. 

While in the Knesset, Makhoul was a vocal opponent of Israel’s nuclear weapons program — the existence of which Israel has never publicly acknowledged — and proposed a bill to shut down the Dimona nuclear reactor. In 2000 he was the first Knesset member to attempt a break in Israel’s “nuclear ambiguity” policy by prompting an open debate on Israel’s atomic program. He is also a supporter of Mordechai Vanunu, the former Israeli nuclear technician who was imprisoned for revealing details of Israel’s nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986 and had called for Vanunu’s release on several occasions.

After leaving the Knesset, Makhoul remained active in Hadash, the CPI and the Emil Touma Institute. At the Hadash National Convention hosted held in October 25, he denounced US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Gaza war as the “continuation of the war of annihilation,” and demanded “concrete paths to establish Palestinian statehood,” in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=32475