Israel’s election committee bars two Arab-led lists before October vote

Israel’s Central Elections Committee voted to bar the country’s two main Arab-majority lists from the parliamentary election. If the Supreme Court upholds the decision, Palestinian citizens of Israel could lose their principal representatives in the Knesset.

The lists are the Joint List — an alliance of Hadash, Balad and Ta’al — and Ra’am, which is running separately. The committee voted 18-5 against each list.

The election is scheduled for October 27. The Supreme Court is expected to issue the final ruling and has previously overturned attempts to exclude Arab parties and candidates.

The lists facing exclusion

Hadash is a left-wing party with Jewish and Arab members, Ta’al focuses on the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Balad advocates a state with equal rights for all citizens. In the current Knesset, the Hadash-Ta’al alliance holds five seats, while Balad holds none.

Ra’am is led by Mansour Abbas. It holds five seats in the current Knesset and previously joined the broad coalition that governed Israel from 2021 to 2022.

Both lists rely on support from Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about one-fifth of the population. A list must receive at least 3.25% of the national vote to enter the Knesset.

Separate votes against candidates

The committee also voted to disqualify Ofer Cassif, a Jewish politician from Hadash, and Sami Abu Shehadeh, Balad’s leader. The vote against Cassif was 18-5, while Abu Shehadeh was barred by 31 votes to four.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara opposed excluding both lists and Cassif, saying the evidence did not meet the legal threshold. She took a different position on Abu Shehadeh over an article published on October 8, 2023, which she said could be read as supporting armed struggle.

Abu Shehadeh rejected that interpretation and said he supported political and civil struggle for peace, justice and equality. Adalah, the Palestinian legal rights group representing the lists and candidates, said the article contained no call for violence.

Accusations of unequal standards

The decisions followed petitions from the right-wing parties Likud and Otzma Yehudit. They accused the lists and candidates of denying Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, supporting armed struggle or inciting racism.

The committee rejected petitions seeking to bar the parties of two far-right ministers: Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism. Both ministers have advocated the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and annexation of the occupied West Bank, and face international sanctions over their actions and rhetoric toward Palestinians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also remains eligible to run despite an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, as well as an ongoing corruption trial that began in 2020. Netanyahu denies the allegations.

Adalah plans to challenge the decisions in the Supreme Court. It has documented similar attempts in 2003, 2013, 2015, 2020 and 2022; the court has repeatedly overturned committee decisions, but that history does not guarantee the outcome this time.