Israel’s Central Elections Commission voted last week to exclude the two main Arab lists and two candidates from the legislative elections.
Israel’s Supreme Court has advised Balad party leader Sami Abu Shehadeh to withdraw from the October 27 Knesset elections, warning that it could otherwise issue a ruling disqualifying him.
The development came as the court on Thursday began hearing appeals against decisions by Israel’s Central Election Commission to disqualify Arab voter lists and candidates from the parliamentary elections.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
Last week, the electoral commission voted to disqualify the country’s two main Arab-majority political lists – Raam and the Joint List, which is an alliance of Hadash, Taal and Balad. Furthermore, he decided to disqualify Abu Shehadeh and MP Ofer Cassif, a Jewish politician from the Arab-Jewish party Hadash.
Abu Shehadeh is a historian from Jaffa who served in the Knesset on the Joint List from September 2019 to November 2022; Balad was expelled from the Knesset in 2022. Hadash MK Cassif first appeared on the joint Hadash-Ta’al list in April 2019, in the slot reserved for a Jewish candidate.
On Thursday, the nine-judge panel heard arguments from Abu Shehadeh and his legal team, led by Hassan Jabareen, according to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation.
Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit told Abu Shehadeh that a majority of judges favored disqualifying his candidacy and gave him until Friday to withdraw, according to the channel. If he does not withdraw, the judges are expected to issue a decision disqualifying his candidacy, according to the report.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose Otzma Yehudit party called for Abu Shehadeh’s disqualification, appeared in court wearing a lawyer’s robe. “Sami Abu Shehadeh cannot be a member of the Knesset. A supporter of terrorism belongs in prison, not in the Knesset,” he said.
Abu Shehadeh was accused of sympathizing with Hamas and failing to condemn the attacks of October 7, 2023. He denied this at the hearing, saying his comments “may have been taken out of context” and that he was “totally opposed to acts of violence.”
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara justified her disqualification because of an article he published the day after October 7 that she said expressed support for the armed struggle. She opposed the disqualification of Cassif and the Joint List, saying the evidence did not meet the strictest legal standards.
“A dangerous precedent”
Mairav Zonszein, senior Israeli analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that Ra’am’s ban was particularly “striking.”
“The banning of the Joint List and Balad has almost become a tradition in Israeli politics. However… Ra’am has been part of past coalitions and its leader, Mansour Abbas, was (a minister without portfolio) in the Bennett-Lapid government. Additionally, it now has (Yoav Segalovitz) a former police official and a Jewish Israeli politician in its ranks, which makes this attempt even more remarkable,” she said.
Israeli affairs expert Shadi al-Sharafa told Al Jazeera it was “a dangerous precedent that did not exist before”, saying it was the first call to disqualify all Arab representation rather than a single candidate or list.
Al-Sharafa said the Arab votes could be decisive in a society “sharply divided between the camp that supports Netanyahu and the camp that opposes him,” and that the petitioners not only want to expel Abu Shehadeh from the Knesset, but also try him.
The decision to ban major Arab parties leaves Palestinian citizens of Israel without major options for representation in the Knesset.
Walid al-Omari, head of Al Jazeera’s Arab bureau in Ramallah, said that if the court upheld the disqualifications, about 20 percent of Arab citizens could be left without representation in the next Knesset.
Israel’s Central Election Commission is primarily a political body composed of representatives of the parliamentary blocs of the outgoing Knesset. In the past, the Supreme Court has overturned Central Election Commission decisions disqualifying Arab lists and legislators.
Gn world
