Arab party leader forced to withdraw from Israeli elections

Arab Israeli politician Sami Abu Shehadeh has withdrawn his candidacy for the upcoming Israeli elections after the Supreme Court advised him to drop out.

The leader of the left-wing Palestinian Balad party announced on Friday he was dropping his bid for election to the Knesset on October 27.

His withdrawal, which came after the court threatened to disqualify him, comes amid recent efforts by Israeli authorities to block Arab Israeli parties from taking part.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Friday, Abu Shehadeh said he withdrew because he “didn’t have any other choices”.

He said the push to bar Arab parties in Israel was aimed at keeping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir in power.

“Netanyahu and Ben Gvir know that if the Arab-Palestinian community participate in the next election, this will be the highest wall preventing them from returning to rule,” he said.

Of 38 lists running in the election, only two represent the Arab Palestinian minority, he noted. “They’re trying to disqualify the two lists.”

Political analysts view Arab Israeli parties as potential kingmakers in the election, with polls showing neither Netanyahu’s coalition nor the main opposition bloc on course for an outright majority.

Abu Shehadeh’s withdrawal came after the Supreme Court indicated that a majority of its judges agreed with a September 23 decision from Israel’s Central Elections Committee to oust him from the race after nationalist political rivals accused him of supporting Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023.

Adalah, a rights organisation representing Abu Shehadeh, condemned the court, saying the evidence it presented had no legal basis.

“The court has effectively decided to remove a Palestinian leader, a citizen of Israel, from the Knesset,” Adalah said in a statement.

“The court’s clear intention to disqualify him,” it added, was “a direction that would have set a dangerous legal precedent with devastating consequences”.

Abu Shehadeh served in the Knesset from 2019 to 2022. Balad confirmed he was withdrawing his candidacy but stressed that the decision did not mark the end of his political struggle and that he would remain party leader.

A ‘historical catastrophe’ for democracy

Israel’s elections committee voted to disqualify him at the request of far-right minister Ben-Gvir, who accused him of supporting the Hamas attack due to an article issued the following day in which Abu Shehadeh called it an “important historical event”.

Speaking to the Supreme Court on Thursday, Abu Shehadeh said he did not support “armed struggle” but acknowledged that a paragraph in the article had been incorrectly worded. He said his intention was to call for moving the conflict towards a political process.

Adalah labelled his withdrawal from the election “a severe blow to the right of Palestinian citizens to be represented and to stand for election”.

The elections committee also barred two Arab electoral lists: the United Arab List and the Joint List, a three-party alliance that includes Abu Shehadeh’s party Balad. But the Supreme Court overturned that decision on Friday.

Adalah has questioned why Palestinian candidates are being disqualified but far-right Israeli candidates were “cleared to run” despite openly calling for violence against Palestinians and making statements “amounting to incitement to genocide”.

Although the Supreme Court restored the United Arab List, and another Arab party, to the ballot on Friday, Shehadeh said the court’s reversal did not make the original disqualifications acceptable.

“In the end, what happened yesterday was a historical catastrophe for democracy, or the very narrow margins of democracy in the State of Israel,” he said. “I was disqualified because I think differently, because I have a different narrative on how to read history, the present, and the future in the place that we live today.”