Israel: double standards in elections: Arab leader expelled, far right eliminated | Explanatory news

A prominent Palestinian Israeli politician has been forced to withdraw from upcoming elections over his remarks on the Gaza war, while Israel’s far-right leaders have remained unresponsive despite their inflammatory rhetoric and calls for violence against Palestinians.

Israeli political institutions, including the electorate, have been accused of exercising double standards in targeting Palestinian politicians and parties in Israel.

Sami Abu Shehadeh, the head of the Balad party, withdrew his candidacy after the Supreme Court warned he could be disqualified from the race. He called the decision to disqualify him from the upcoming elections a “historic catastrophe for democracy.”

The legal opinion came after Israel’s central election commission barred him from retracting his comments on the war on Gaza.

The election, scheduled for October 27, has renewed scrutiny of the challenges facing Palestinian citizens of Israel seeking political representation.

Experts and critics, including Palestinian rights groups, have accused election system staff of double standards: Arab candidates faced attempts to exclude them from the ballot, while far-right Israeli politicians accused of repeatedly inciting violence against Palestinians were allowed to run.

“This has always been the case, the Israeli political system, the political elite, has always designed the political system in a way to ensure that it is a Zionist state, not just or even a Jewish state,” Zaidon Alkinani, founding director of the Arab Perspectives Institute, told Al Jazeera.

So what happened and what does the controversy say about Palestinian participation in Israeli elections?

Who is Sami Abu Shehadeh?

Abu Shehadeh is a Jaffa historian and the leader of Balad, a Palestinian nationalist party that advocates equal rights for all citizens of Israel. He served in the Knesset from 2019 to 2022.

His candidacy was challenged by the far-right Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, over an article published on October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas’s attacks on Israel, which he called an “important historical event.”

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara supported his disqualification, arguing that the wording could amount to support for armed struggle.

Abu Shehadeh, speaking at the Supreme Court on Thursday, said he did not support “armed struggle” but acknowledged that a paragraph in the article had been poorly worded. The Balad leader said his intention was to push for the conflict to evolve into a political process.

What was the decision of the Israeli Supreme Court?

Last month, the Central Election Commission voted to exclude Abu Shehadeh, Hadash politician Ofer Cassif and the two main Arab-majority electoral lists – the Joint List, which includes Balad, Hadash and Ta’al, and Ra’am, or the Joint List.

The Supreme Court overturned the bans on both lists and on Cassif.

Cassif is a politician in the left-wing, predominantly Arab Hadash-Ta’al party. In the late 1980s, the pro-Palestinian Israeli spent time in prison for refusing to serve as a soldier in the occupied territories.

He claimed in 2021 that police beat him while he participated in a protest against an illegal Jewish settlement in occupied East Jerusalem.

Abu Shehadeh accused the Supreme Court of bowing to pressure from Ben-Gvir and questioned how a politician he accused of promoting violence and displacement of Palestinians could seek his exclusion from the elections.

“Someone (Ben-Gvir) who called for starvation in Gaza, preventing access to medicine, water and food, and who supported the occupation and ethnic cleansing in the (occupied) West Bank… was able to disqualify me, a human rights activist for three decades,” Abu Shehadeh told Al Jazeera.

Adalah, the legal rights group that represents him, called his withdrawal a “severe blow” to Palestinian citizens’ right to political representation.

“This entire process was a deliberate attempt to delegitimize Palestinian citizens and their parliamentary representatives and turn racism against Palestinians into electoral propaganda,” he said in a statement to the media.

Have Israeli leaders used inflammatory language?

Ahead of the Supreme Court hearings, petitions were also filed seeking to disqualify Ben-Gvir’s parties and that of another far-right cabinet member, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

The Central Election Commission rejected these petitions, leaving both parties on the ballot.

Article 7A of Israel’s Knesset Basic Law provides the legal basis for excluding candidates or electoral lists, including rejecting Israel’s character as a “Jewish and democratic state”, promoting racism, or supporting an armed campaign against Israel by a hostile state or a designated “terrorist” group.

Attorney General Baharav-Miara said attempts to exclude far-right parties lacked sufficient legal basis.

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have repeatedly faced international backlash following their inflammatory rhetoric toward Palestinians. In 2025, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway imposed sanctions on the two ministers, accusing them of repeatedly inciting violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

More recently, Ben-Gvir proposed a seven-year plan for Palestinians to leave Gaza through what he called “voluntary emigration.”

“Instead of illusions of peace now, we need emigration actions now,” he said in September. “Instead of digging tunnels, it’s time to pack our bags.”

Smotrich also advocated the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and the annexation of the occupied West Bank. He and Ben-Gvir have called for the permanent takeover of Gaza and the reestablishment of Jewish settlements, proposals that Netanyahu has rejected.

Why are there accusations of double standards?

The differential treatment of Abu Shehadeh and Israeli far-right politicians has led Palestinian politicians and pundits to accuse the electoral system of applying double standards.

Palestinian political analyst and playwright Ahmed Najjar told Al Jazeera that Abu Shehadeh’s case revealed what he described as the “two-tiered nature of Israeli democracy.”

“This is not about equal application of the law,” he said. “It sets a threshold for Jewish Israeli politicians and another for Palestinian citizens of Israel. »

Najjar highlighted the contrast between the court’s treatment of Abu Shehadeh’s October 2023 article and the continued eligibility of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, despite inflammatory statements attributed to the two far-right politicians.

“Jewish extremism can be accommodated in the Israeli political system,” Najjar argued, “while Palestinian political discourse is treated as an existential threat.”

“A democracy that selectively excludes Palestinian representatives cannot credibly call itself democratic. »

Alkinani, founding director of the Arab Perspectives Institute, said the controversy reflected a broader problem facing Palestinian political participation rather than an isolated dispute over a single candidate.

He told Al Jazeera that Israel’s political system had been historically structured to preserve its Zionist character, creating particular “intimidation” and “pressures” on Palestinian citizens seeking political representation.

Alkinani said these pressures had intensified since October 7, 2023, which he said had given “a powerful symbolic impetus and confidence” to right-wing nationalist parties.

What are the difficulties facing Palestinians in Israeli elections?

Attempts to exclude Palestinian-led parties are not new.

Adalah documented challenges to Arab candidates or lists in the 2003, 2013, 2015, 2020 and 2022 elections. The Supreme Court has repeatedly overturned the decisions of the Central Election Commission, whose voting members are representatives of the parties in the outgoing Knesset.

Palestinian citizens of Israel make up about 20 percent of the population, but their turnout at the polls is traditionally lower than that of Israeli Jews.

Parties must also obtain at least 3.25 percent of the national vote to enter parliament, which encourages smaller Arab parties to form joint lists to avoid losing representation altogether.

Alkinani, of the Arab Perspectives Institute, says the problem extends beyond the Israeli far right. Some parties considered centrist on Israeli domestic issues, he said, still support “hawkish security actions toward the Palestinians.”