JERUSALEM — In a unanimous ruling on Friday, Israel’s Supreme Court restored several Arab parties to the October 27 general election ballot, overturning a decision by an electoral committee that had disqualified multiple candidates earlier this month.
The court’s decision came hours after one Arab-Israeli politician withdrew under pressure. The Electoral Committee had voted in September to bar candidates from the United Arab List and other Arab parties from participating in the upcoming election.
This reversal marks a significant development, as the United Arab List made history in the 2021 election by becoming the first Arab party to join an Israeli government coalition, playing a crucial role in briefly removing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power.
The Supreme Court’s 7-2 ruling not only reinstated the United Arab List and another Arab party but also restored the candidacy of Ofer Cassif, a far-left Jewish MP known for his vocal criticism of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians.
While the majority justices supported Cassif’s eligibility, the two dissenting justices argued that his support for “armed struggle against the state of Israel” constituted grounds for disqualification.
Critically, the court nearly always overturns the electoral committee when it decides to ban candidates. However, in a pre-hearing Thursday, justices indicated they might uphold the ban on Sami Abu Shehadeh, head of the left-wing Palestinian Balad Party. Abu Shehadeh withdrew his candidacy shortly after.
His party stated that a court-ordered removal of Abu Shehadeh from the election would have had “grave consequences for the country’s political and parliamentary life.”
The case against Abu Shehadeh centers on an article he wrote following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israel’s history, which prompted a large-scale Israeli military operation in Gaza. In the article, Abu Shehadeh described the attack as an “important historical event” while denying he supported it.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right ally of Netanyahuknown for provocative statementsled the charge against Abu Shehadeh and called his exclusion from the election “a tremendous victory,” though he expressed disappointment that the Supreme Court did not directly rule against him.
Arab-Israelis, descendants of Palestinians who fled or were forced out during Israel’s founding in 1948, comprise approximately 20 percent of the country’s population.
Much of the Arab-Israeli community identifies as Palestinian and previously avoided Israeli coalition politics until 2021.
The United Arab List, also known as Raam, recently made an unprecedented move by running a Jewish Zionist candidate, Yoav Segalovitz, who gained popularity in Arab communities through his work in policing crime.
Some analysts suggest Segalovitz’s candidacy could facilitate political alliances between Netanyahu’s rivals and Raam and its leader Mansour Abbas, a moderate Islamist former dentist.
Adalah, an advocacy group for the rights of Israeli Arabs, described the disqualification effort as an attempt “to delegitimize Palestinian citizens and their parliamentary representatives and to turn racism against Palestinians into electoral propaganda.”
