Israel Election Committee bars Arab party leader from Knesset race

The decision is not necessarily final. The Supreme Court will now have the decisive say on whether Abu Shehadeh can participate in the October 27 election.

By World Israel News Staff

Israel’s Central Elections Committee voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to disqualify Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh from running in next month’s election, with the committee’s chairman taking the unusual step of departing from his customary neutrality to vote in favor of barring the Arab politician.

The committee voted 30-4 in favor of disqualifying Abu Shehadeh following a heated hearing centered on his statements after the October 7 massacre and previous remarks concerning Palestinian terrorism.

The decision is not necessarily final. The Supreme Court will now have the decisive say on whether Abu Shehadeh can participate in the October 27 election.

Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, who chairs the Central Elections Committee, said the evidence presented against Abu Shehadeh was sufficiently compelling that he would depart from the practice of committee chairmen generally maintaining neutrality in disqualification proceedings.

“I will deviate from the custom of chairmen to maintain neutrality,” Sohlberg said. “I did not find an answer that could satisfy me, and therefore, although this is rare, I am voting in favor of disqualifying Sami Abu Shehadeh.”

“If there is a case where the application is clear, this is the case,” he added.

The intervention was particularly notable because Sohlberg had opened Wednesday’s proceedings by stressing the gravity of excluding candidates or entire parties from Israel’s democratic process.

Disqualifying a candidate or electoral slate “denies an entire public the possibility of giving them its vote, and this should not be taken lightly,” Sohlberg said.

“The stronger the authority, the greater the caution required in exercising it,” he added.

The petition against Abu Shehadeh, filed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, focused heavily on statements made by the Balad leader following the Hamas-led October 7 massacre.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Attorney Amit Aisman had said ahead of the hearing that the request to disqualify Abu Shehadeh warranted “serious consideration,” pointing in particular to an article he published one day after the massacre that they said could constitute support for armed struggle against Israel.

The effort to bar Abu Shehadeh also attracted support from parties outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Naftali Bennett’s Beyachad party announced that it would support his disqualification, citing his statements concerning October 7.

Democrats chairman Yair Golan also backed the petition.

“True democratic partnership also requires red lines,” Golan said. “The things Sami Abu Shehadeh said just one day after October 7 are serious. Anyone who wants Jewish-Arab partnership does not speak that way, period.”

“A call for or legitimization of armed struggle and harm to civilians, Jews or Arabs, is a red line,” he continued, while arguing that the same standard should also be applied to Jewish politicians he considers extremists.

Abu Shehadeh has maintained that he has never supported armed struggle against Israel.

His critics, however, have pointed to previous remarks concerning Palestinian attacks against Israelis in addition to his comments following October 7.

In a 2021 interview, Abu Shehadeh refused to describe Palestinians who carried out attacks against Israelis as “terrorists,” instead referring to security prisoners as “freedom prisoners” or “political prisoners.” When specifically asked whether the perpetrators of the Park Hotel and Dolphinarium massacres were terrorists, he declined to give a yes-or-no answer, describing the issue as more complicated.

Abu Shehadeh participated in Wednesday’s proceedings remotely after being hospitalized with an injury. Sohlberg rejected his request to postpone the hearing but allowed him to participate by video conference.

The hearing grew heated when MK Ahmad Tibi spoke in defense of Abu Shehadeh.

Ben Gvir and attorney Tally Gotliv repeatedly interrupted Tibi, who responded by calling Ben Gvir a “supporter of terrorism.” Sohlberg intervened and warned that he would be forced to halt the hearing if order could not be restored.

“It is impossible to conduct a hearing like this, even if difficult things are being heard,” Sohlberg said.

The Abu Shehadeh vote came during a marathon series of hearings over efforts to exclude candidates and parties from the race for the 26th Knesset. Most of the petitions being considered target Arab parties and candidates, although challenges have also been filed against parties on the Jewish right.

Earlier Wednesday, the committee also voted to disqualify Joint List MK Ofer Cassif, approving a petition filed by Netanyahu’s Likud party.

Nineteen committee members voted to bar Cassif, five opposed the move and two abstained. The petition argued that the Hadash lawmaker’s statements and actions amounted to support for armed struggle against Israel and rejection of the country’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state.

Cassif, the only Jewish candidate on the predominantly Arab Joint List slate, is one of the Knesset’s most outspoken critics of the Israeli government and the IDF’s conduct in Gaza.

The attorney general opposed his disqualification, arguing that the evidence did not meet the stringent legal threshold required to prevent a candidate from running for the Knesset.

Cassif rejected the allegations during Wednesday’s hearing and argued that criticism of the government and Israeli military operations could not legitimately be characterized as support for Israel’s enemies.

“Presenting my opposition to the government’s policy and the actions of its agents as support for the enemy, a breach of loyalty, and harm to the state is a blatant distortion of reality and a complete distortion of the spirit of democracy,” Cassif said.

He also maintained that he had condemned the October 7 massacre and Hamas’s actions from the day of the attack.

The vote marks the second time the Central Elections Committee has sought to keep Cassif out of the Knesset. In 2019, the committee voted to disqualify him, but the Supreme Court overturned the decision and allowed him to run.

Both cases now move to the Supreme Court, leaving the final determination over whether Abu Shehadeh and Cassif can compete in the upcoming election in the hands of the justices.

Under Section 7A of Basic Law: The Knesset, candidates and electoral lists can be barred for rejecting Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, inciting racism or supporting armed struggle by an enemy state or terrorist organization against Israel. Israeli courts have historically imposed a high evidentiary threshold before upholding such disqualifications.

The committee is continuing to consider additional petitions targeting parties and candidates ahead of the election, including challenges involving Ra’am, the Joint List, Balad, Otzma Yehudit, the Democrats and the Religious Zionism-Zehut list.