JERUSALEM \u2013 Israel’s Supreme Court on Friday cleared four Arab-majority parties to participate in the parliamentary elections scheduled for Oct 27, overturning a decision by the country’s electoral body.<\/p>\n
The Central Elections Committee last week disqualified Hadash, Balad and Ta’al, which are running together under the Joint List, as well as the Ra’am party, which is running separately.<\/p>\n
The petitions seeking their disqualification were filed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party, on claims that the Arab-majority parties rejected Israel’s definition as a Jewish state and supported “armed struggle” against Israel.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court ruled that the material submitted to the electoral committee did not meet the legal standards for excluding the parties.<\/p>\n
However, Balad leader Sami Abou Shahadeh said earlier Friday that he had accepted the Supreme Court’s proposal and withdrawn from the parliamentary race.<\/p>\n
The petition against Abou Shahadeh focused on an article he published describing Hamas’s Oct 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel as a historically significant event in military, political, and strategic terms.<\/p>\n
During the court hearing on his disqualification, the justices indicated that a majority backed the decision and suggested he withdraw to avoid a ruling against him.<\/p>\n
Abou Shahadeh said he had been subjected to “political persecution,” while stressing that his withdrawal did not represent a retreat from his political positions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JERUSALEM \u2013 Israel’s Supreme Court on Friday cleared four Arab-majority parties to participate in the parliamentary elections scheduled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[134380,957,49,134379,85,46,286808,80775,79956,14869,43,271334],"class_list":["post-635112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-balad-party","tag-ben-gvir","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-hadash","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-central-elections-committee","tag-israel-supreme-court","tag-jewish-power-party","tag-likud-party","tag-news","tag-ta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}