Yousef Jabareen has the air of a man who knows exactly what he wants, yet does not quite know where he is.
He arrives in the modish Arab restaurant in Haifa 35 minutes late, speaking quickly and quietly into his phone, before sitting down with a sigh and gesturing for coffee.
He has just driven the width of northern Israel, he explains, having stopped for a pre-breakfast interview with local media in Nazareth en route.
After speaking to The Telegraph, he will record a podcast, “somewhere else, I’m not sure where”, then it’s on to an open-air public meeting near his home town of Umm al-Fahm, next to the West Bank, followed by two weddings in the evening.
“I like weddings,” he says with the faintest of smiles. “They are not formal campaign events. But look … it’s an election. You can reach so many people.”
Such is the hectic daily schedule of one of Israel’s most prominent Arab politicians in the run-up to arguably the most consequential general election in a generation.
