Israel Court Restores Arab Parties

Jerusalem — Israel’s Supreme Court on 2 October restored the country’s two main Arab-majority political lists to the ballot for the 27 October parliamentary election and kept sitting Jewish lawmaker Ofer Cassif in the race, reversing September disqualifications by the Central Elections Committee that critics said would have shut a large minority out of the vote.

The justices ruled unanimously that the committee’s ban on Ra’am — also called the United Arab List — and on the Joint List alliance of Hadash, Ta’al and Balad did not meet the narrow legal tests for excluding an entire candidate list. Separately, the court voted 7⁠–⁠2 against disqualifying Cassif, a Hadash member of the Knesset who has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Two dissenting justices said Cassif supports armed struggle against the state, which Israeli election law treats as grounds for a ban.

Palestinian citizens of Israel make up about 20 percent of the population. The committee’s September votes to bar both major Arab-led lists, plus Cassif and Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh as individuals, had drawn accusations of a double standard because far-right parties stayed on the ballot. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s office had found that the evidence against Ra’am and the Joint List did not meet the legal threshold for exclusion, while supporting a ban on Abu Shehadeh.

What the court decided

Israel’s Basic Law on the Knesset lets the Central Elections Committee — a political body weighted toward parties in the outgoing parliament — seek to disqualify lists or candidates that deny Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state or that support armed struggle by an enemy state or terrorist group. A disqualification of an individual candidate needs Supreme Court approval; a list that is barred can appeal to the court.

In Cassif’s case, the majority said his statements and actions, which the panel called “revolting,” still fell short of the “critical mass” case law requires before a court may keep a sitting member off the ballot. Dissenters David Mintz and Alex Stein would have upheld the ban. For Ra’am and the Joint List, the court said the material before the committee did not clear the stringent standard for barring an entire list.

Abu Shehadeh withdrew during the proceedings after Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit indicated that a majority of the nine justices favored upholding his disqualification over an opinion piece after the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023. Balad said a court-ordered removal would have set a harsher precedent than a voluntary exit. The court then dismissed the case against him as moot.

Why it matters for 27 October

Israelis will elect 120 members of the 26th Knesset and shape the coalition that succeeds Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government as he seeks another term. Ra’am made history after the 2021 election by becoming the first Arab party to join an Israeli government; this year it is also fielding a Jewish Zionist candidate, Yoav Segalovitz. The Supreme Court has nearly always overruled committee bans on candidates, and since a 1985 amendment it has upheld only one such exclusion of a party — the ultranationalist Kach list in 1988.

The ruling does not settle the campaign’s fights over security, Gaza, or coalition arithmetic. It does mean Arab-majority lists are back on the ballot three and a half weeks before voting day, after an unprecedented attempt to exclude both major Arab-led tickets at once.