Gadeer Mreeh set to break the glass ceiling for Druze women in politics

Mreeh is listed as 25 on Blue and White's candidates list, and according to polls the party is expected to receive well over 30 seats in the upcoming election.

APRIL 2, 2019 11:40

Gadeer Mreeh, a Druze woman running in former armed forces chief Benny Gantz political party Blue and White (photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS) — Gadeer Mreeh, a Druze woman running in former armed forces chief Benny Gantz political party Blue and White

(photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)

Blue and White party candidate Gadeer Mreeh is set to be the first Druze woman to join the Knesset following the April 9 elections.

Mreeh, who is a former news anchor, told i24 News in an interview that she is a "fusion or a mix of two worlds - the western and the eastern. I have conservative thoughts... but at the same time I am a liberal woman."

Mreeh is listed as 25 on Blue and White's candidates list, and according to polls the party is expected to receive well over 30 seats in the upcoming election.

In 2017, i24 said, she made history and became the first non-Jewish to anchor a Hebrew-language broadcast "shattering the glass ceiling" for the minority Druze communmity and the "patriachy" facing women in the broadcast industry.

Mreeh, a 34-year-old mother of two from the northern Israeli village of Daliyat al-Karme, said one of her main goals is to fix the Nation-State Bill, a law that states that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people.

Speaking to Reuters, Mreeh said that she hopes to overturn the law and “find a solution in legislation that will enshrine equality for all our citizens, for all Israeli citizens.”

On the same matter, she told i24 News that there has to be a law that "enshrines equality for all our Israeli citizens."

There are some 140,000 Druze in Israel who make up 2% of the country's population, many of whom serve in the IDF.