High Court urges Balad chairman to drop out of elections or face disqualification

The High Court urged Balad party chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh on Thursday to end his candidacy in the upcoming October 27 election, with Supreme Court President Isaac Amit telling him that a majority of the nine-justice panel would uphold his recent disqualification by the Central Elections Committee.

“There is a majority for your disqualification,” Amit told Abu Shehadeh during the hearing. “We recommend that Abu Shehadeh withdraw from the race.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, whose far-right Otzma Yehudit party filed the petition to disqualify Abu Shehadeh and who personally argued the case before the court, denounced the proposal as “far too lenient,” insisting the court should formally bar him from running.

“He should not be given the opportunity to withdraw. There should be a ruling,” Ben Gvir said.

The High Court of Justice hearings began Thursday morning on the disqualification of Arab parties and candidates from the upcoming election, as protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem.

An expanded panel of nine justices was set to consider the Central Elections Committee’s decisions last week to disqualify Balad chairman Abu Shehadeh and Hadash MK Ofer Cassif, as well as Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am party and the Joint List — a bloc made up of Balad, Hadash and Ta’al. The court began with Abu Shehadeh’s case, followed by Cassif, the Joint List and Ra’am later in the day.

Outside the court, protesters demonstrated against the disqualifications, while Cassif told the crowd ahead of the hearings that his party would “bring justice, peace and a prosperous future for all our children — Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs.”

“We will defeat fascism, and it will be thrown into the dustbin of history,” he added.

Ben Gvir arrived at the court wearing a lawyer’s robe alongside the party’s new No. 2, Tally Gotliv, also a lawyer, to represent the party in the proceedings.

“Sami Abu Shehadeh cannot be a member of Knesset. A supporter of terrorism belongs in prison, not in the Knesset,” Ben Gvir said, arguing that the Balad leader had “supported” the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara supported Abu Shehadeh’s disqualification over an article he published a day after October 7 that she said expressed support for armed struggle against Israel. CEC chairman and Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, as well as parties across the Zionist opposition, also supported barring him. Abu Shehadeh denied supporting violence or terrorism and argued that the article did not provide grounds for disqualifying him.

As the hearings continued, Ben Gvir and Gotliv traded insults with Joint List politicians outside the courtroom amid throngs of protesters.

Ben Gvir told Ta’al head Ahmad Tibi, Cassif and Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen: “You are terrorism’s front line in the Knesset. We’ll throw you out of the Knesset.”

“Every dog has his day,” Tibi responded in Arabic, while Jabareen and Cassif called Ben Gvir a “Nazi.”

In a separate exchange, Gotliv approached Tibi, shouting at him and demanding to know whether he recognized a Jewish state. “I recognize your need for a psychiatrist,” he replied.

The CEC is headed by a Supreme Court justice but is made up largely of representatives of Knesset factions, with the governing coalition holding a majority. Decisions to disqualify individual candidates require Supreme Court approval, while bans on entire party slates can be appealed to the court, which has overturned many such disqualifications in the past.