Palestinian to represent Israel in Miss Earth competition

Twenty-two-year-old student and model Huda Nakash lives in the Israeli city of Haifa. The Geography student says she will use the opportunity to promote recognition for the Israeli-Arab community. Huda plans to wear a dress with traditional Palestinian embroidery as part of her wardrobe for the competition, which is set to start on December 3."This is a traditional Palestinian dress, and as I am a Palestinian Arab, this dress represents me and represents Palestine," said Huda, while wearing the garment during a dress-fitting session.

Yara Mashour, the Editor of the Nazareth-based magazine al-Sonara, entered Huda in the competition.

"This is an international competition that will take place for the eleventh year, it aims to aid the environment and its logo is 'Beauty with a cause.' It was an honour for me that I was able to send a representative to this competition. Of course it was very important to me to support the Arab woman, as I think that Huda Nakash from Haifa is the one," said Mashour.

Miss Earth 2011, the brain child of Philippines-based Carousel Productions, aims to raise environmental awareness through beauty pageants. Originally set to take place in the Thai capital of Bangkok, the competition was recently re-located to the Philippines due to the floods in the South East Asian country.

Sponsors of Huda Nakash's nomination for the competition hope the media attention in the competition will shed favourable light on the Arab community of Israel.

"The voice of the Arab community who lives in Israel, as a Palestinian (Huda) moves our voice and says that we can and we have the components and the capabilities to achieve the highest levels. I am telling you it is a new experience and we have a lot of hope to achieve the highest levels to show that we are the same as the others," said Mariam, a shop owner and sponsor of Huda.

Huda Nakash sprang to fame earlier in the year when Lilac magazine, a sister publication of al-Sonara, ran pictures of her in a bikini. She became the first Israeli-Arab woman to pose publicly in a bikini.

"First the idea was from the editor of the magazine to take photos (of me) wearing a bikini and I agreed because it is part of my job and also because in the competition I will have photos taken of me in a bikini," Huda said.

Candidates from approximately 80 countries started to arrive in Manilla on Thursday (November 17), ahead of the competition in December. They will take part in various events to raise awareness for the environment.