Election panel votes overwhelmingly to bar Ra’am from election; Supreme Court reversal likely

The Central Elections Committee votes 18-5 to disqualify Mansour Abbas’s largely Arab Ra’am party from running in the October 27 election, accepting petitions filed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit and the Choose Life Forum, an organization representing victims of terror.

The decision will automatically be reviewed by the Supreme Court and is likely to be struck down given the court’s historically high threshold for disqualification.

The CEC is headed by a Supreme Court justice but composed of representatives of Knesset factions, in which Netanyahu’s coalition holds a majority, making its decisions highly political. Most disqualifications are overturned by the court.

The petitions sought to bar Ra’am under provisions of Basic Law: The Knesset, a quasi-constitutional law prohibiting parties that negate Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state or incite racism.

Ra’am’s disqualification is especially notable given that the party, which has Islamist roots, joined a governing coalition from 2021-2022 and recently added Jewish former lawmaker Yoav Segalovitz to its slate.

A representative for Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara tells the committee that her office opposed Ra’am’s disqualification, consistent with its position that none of the petitions before the CEC had sufficient grounds except the one against Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh, which the committee approved earlier today.

“We explained in our written submission that the quotations cited in the petitions themselves demonstrate that MK Mansour Abbas recognizes Israel’s Jewish character,” she says.

She adds that the allegations of incitement to racism rested on a “very thin” petition that failed to meet the evidentiary threshold required for disqualification.