Panel votes to disqualify Balad chief Abu Shehadeh with support from Sohlberg, opposition

By Ariela Karmel

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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 chair Sami Abou Shahdeh appears on a screen behind the Central Elections Committee during a disqualification hearing at the Knesset in Jerusalem, September 23, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The Central Elections Committee votes 30-4 to disqualify Balad chairman and Joint List No. 3 Sami Abu Shehadeh from running in the October 27 election, with the support of all opposition parties and rare backing from the Supreme Court justice heading the panel.

The committee accepts both grounds cited in the petition to ban Abu Shehadeh’s participation: supporting armed struggle by an enemy state or terrorist organization against Israel, and negating Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state.

Justice Noam Sohlberg participates in the vote — the first time in decades a committee chairman has done so — saying Abu Shehadeh failed to adequately answer allegations that he expressed support for Hamas’s armed struggle against Israel in an article published a day after the October 7, 2023, massacre.

All opposition parties, including Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar, Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad, Yair Golan’s Democrats, Benny Gantz’s Blue and White and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, ultimately backed the petition.

The backing of Sohlberg and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who penned an opinion yesterday supporting the disqualification, raises the prospect that the Supreme Court may uphold the decision, which must receive the court’s approval before taking effect, despite its historically high threshold for disqualifying candidates.

The petition, filed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, centers on an Arabic-language article Abu Shehadeh published on October 8, 2023, in which he described the assault a day earlier as “an important historic event militarily, politically and strategically” and wrote that others could learn from Hamas’s success in surprising Israel.

Abu Shehadeh, who denies supporting the attack or political violence, calls his disqualification an attempt to “silence” him and Arab society’s political voice. “I have never called for violence or terrorism. I oppose armed struggle,” he says.