Israel’s Supreme Court on Friday reinstated an Arab party to the election ballot, potentially giving it a pivotal role in the vote, hours after an Arab-Israeli politician withdrew his candidacy following court pressure.
An electoral committee made up of lawmakers in September had voted to disqualify from the Oct. 27 election candidates including those from the United Arab List, which had joined a motley government in 2021 that briefly removed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power.
The Supreme Court unanimously overruled the lawmakers and allowed on the ballot the United Arab List, as well as another Arab party.
The justices, in a 7-2 vote, also reinstated the candidacy of Ofer Cassif, a far-left sitting Jewish member of parliament who is a relentless critic of Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians.
The two dissenting justices said that Cassif supported “armed struggle against the state of Israel” as grounds for disqualification.
The Supreme Court has nearly always overruled the committee of lawmakers who vote to ban candidates.
But at a hearing Thursday, justices suggested they would back the ban on Sami Abu Shehadeh, who heads the left-wing Palestinian Balad Party.
Abu Shehadeh late Thursday withdrew his candidacy in the face of near certain defeat in the court.
His party, in a statement, said that a court-ordered rather than voluntary removal of Abu Shehadeh from the election would have had “grave consequences for the country’s political and parliamentary life”.
A far-right ally of Netanyahu led the charge to disqualify Abu Shehadeh over an article after Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, the deadliest in the history of Israel, which responded with a massive offensive in Gaza.
Abu Shehadeh in the article said that the attack was an “important historical event.” He denied he was supporting the attack.
Israeli-Arabs, descendants of Palestinians who fled or were forced out when the state of Israel was created in 1948, make up about 20 percent of the country’s population.
Most identify as Palestinians and until 2021 had stayed out of Israeli coalition politics.
The United Arab List, known by its acronym Raam, has taken the unprecedented step in the latest election of also running a Jewish Zionist candidate, Yoav Segalovitz, who earned popularity in Arab communities for his police work in curbing crime.
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