Joint List attacks Eisenkot; Gantz joins bid to disqualify Balad chief Abu Shehadeh

Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen attacks Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot for backing far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party’s effort to disqualify Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh from the October 27 election.

“You cannot talk about replacing the right-wing government while at the same time taking part in the campaign to delegitimize representatives of the Arab public,” says Jabareen, who leads the alliance of the three Arab-majority parties Hadash, Ta’al and Balad.

“Anyone who supports democracy cannot lend a hand to Otzma Yehudit’s fascist move and its attempt to disqualify a candidate from the Joint List,” he continues, adding that Eisenkot is “legitimizing” Ben Gvir’s “racist and anti-democratic policies” rather than fighting them.

Eisenkot is also now joined by Benny Gantz’s Blue and White in backing Abu Shehadeh’s disqualification, with the party saying its representatives on the Central Elections Committee will vote in favor of Otzma Yehudit’s petition.

Blue and White, which has polled below the electoral threshold for months and has not categorically ruled out again serving in a government with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, says it will also support a separate petition to disqualify Abu Shehadeh’s Balad, as well as Likud’s bid to disqualify Hadash MK Ofer Cassif, alleging their “support for terrorist activity and opposition to the State of Israel as a Jewish state.”

The petition against Abu Shehadeh centers on an Arabic-language article he published on October 8, 2023, in which he described the Hamas assault a day earlier as “an important historic event militarily, politically and strategically” and wrote that others could learn from Gaza’s success in surprising Israel.

The Balad leader has since denied supporting the Hamas attack or political violence, and said that he would not have published the article had he known the scale of the atrocities at the time.