High Court to hear cases against bans on Arab parties, candidates tomorrow

By Ariela Karmel

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Today, 11:58 am

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Ariela Karmel is a political correspondent at The Times of Israel. She previously reported for Calcalist and Haaretz. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern and African History from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.

Balad party head MK Sami Abu Shehadeh in Jerusalem, October 6, 2022 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The High Court of Justice will hold hearings tomorrow on the Central Elections Committee’s decisions last week to disqualify the two Arab parties — Ra’am and the Joint List — as well as Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh and Hadash MK Ofer Cassif from running in the October 27 election.

The cases will be heard by an expanded panel of nine justices, beginning with Abu Shehadeh at 10 a.m., followed by Cassif at 11:30 a.m., the Joint List at 2 p.m. and Ra’am at 3:30 p.m.

CEC decisions to disqualify individual candidates require Supreme Court approval, while bans on party slates can be appealed to the court, which has historically set a high bar for disqualification and repeatedly overturned such decisions by the committee.

Most of the rulings are expected to be overturned with the exception of Abu Shehadeh, whose case is less clear-cut. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara backed his disqualification over an article he published a day after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack 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.

The Adalah rights group, which is representing the parties and candidates, argues that the CEC decisions “disregard the Supreme Court’s binding case law and rest on irrelevant, outdated or distorted evidence.” It also accuses the body of applying a discriminatory double standard by disqualifying every Arab slate while allowing far-right parties, including far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism, to run despite “extensive evidence of explicit incitement to violence against Palestinians.”

Separately, Yair Golan’s left-wing Democrats party is petitioning the High Court to overturn the CEC’s decision to allow Otzma Yehudit to run, arguing that the party should be disqualified for ostensibly negating Israel’s existence as a democratic state and inciting racism.