Tell me a little about your background and why you got into national politics?

Odeh: I was a member of the Haifa City Council when I was 23 years old, which made me the youngest city councilman in Israel. When I began my political career, I identified with Malcolm X. After two or three years, I evolved — and not to a small degree — because of my service on the council in the city of Haifa, which is the most liberal multicultural yet homogenous city in Israel.

As a result of that experience I was transformed from being someone who believed that either the Jews or the Arabs could survive here, to someone who thought that Arabs and Jews must work together. I began to feel that I must now follow in the footsteps of Martin Luther King, who believed in working together.