Balad

If this democracy is to survive, we're going to have to ban every party except for ours.

Israel's Central Election Committee voted Wednesday to disqualify Mansur Abbas's United Arab List slate from running in the election, as well as the joint list, which consists of the parties of Hadash, Tal, and Balad.

The vote came after left-wing Knesset member Ofer Kasif of the Arab-Jewish Hadash Party and Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh were banned earlier the same day.

These decisions may be reversed by appeal to the High Court of Justice.

Remember, there's no written constitution for the Israelis.

The Joint List of Israel's Palestinian Parties has condemned its ban from the upcoming Knesset elections in October, telling the New Arab that the decisions are based on racism and reflect the hypocrisy of those who claim to support democracy.

The joint list made up of Hadash, Ta'al, and Balad is one of two major Arab-Israeli political box representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, the other being the United Arab List, Ram, which was also barred from the election.

Both lists were barred by Israel's Central Elections Committee on Wednesday, which also disqualified Balad leader Sami Abu Shahadeh and Hadash MK over Kasif.

The decisions are set to be challenged at the Supreme Court next week.

Some 150 Jews in Berlin, many of them Israeli citizens, have signed an open letter defending the left-wing Die Linke party after its victory in this week's Berlin election, amid efforts by Israel's ambassador and German Jewish establishment organizations to keep the party out of government over allegations of anti-Semitism.

Of course, this is a first step and it might be even theatrics, but the Electoral Committee disqualified...

All there are parties, and in particular, it appears that our Attorney General is supporting the disqualification of one particular Balad politician.

So as far as we understand, next week there will be petitions to the High Court, the civil High Court.

But in the meantime, roll out what happened here.

And to come back to yesterday's, most of what happened yesterday probably will not result in a ban because the Supreme Court will overturn it.

Holding to the principle that broadly speaking, you should let people run for election and let the people choose.

What you're rightly highlighting as atypical is the Attorney General's support for and the Deputy Supreme Court President, who's the head of the committee, backing the ban on the leader of the Balad Party for an article he wrote.

immediately after October the 7th, which seemed, well, which, I mean, you know, we've quoted from the article, it appeared to praise October the 7th as a historic achievement for strategic military diplomatic reasons and so on.

They want to do whatever influence they can, either from the Knesset or from the outside.

You've got a smaller party called Ta'al, which is a, I wouldn't call it a, there's, well, before we get to Ta'al, Balad is a secular Arab nationalist party, very much opposed to the idea of a Jewish state.

They want kind of a, I think they're, I don't know what their formal platform is, but this is a far left-wing secular party that is Arab nationalist party that wants to promote the Arab community in Israel.

From outside the government, they did not make it into the last Knesset, but now they combined it with Hadash and Tal.

Tal is maybe along the lines of Balad in terms of its secular outlook, but it's a lot more pragmatic.

Their idea is like, we got to work within the system to advance the interests of the Arab community in Israel.

And then you've got Ra'am, Ram is really a right-wing party, if you were to look at the right-left divide through the lens of the United States or through most European countries, whereas in Israel, it's usually the Arab-Israeli conflict is how you view the right-left divide.

Hours later, the committee also voted 18 to 5 with one abstention to bar the joint list.

That's the alliance of Hadash, Ta'al, and Balad, meaning every Arab majority party is now off the ballot, at least for now.

So, by the way, this joint list is exactly what it sounds like.

It's a joint list of a number of smaller Arab parties.

It also voted to disqualify two individual candidates, Hadash, member of Knesset, Ofer Kasif, 19 to 5, and Balad, chairman, 30 to 4.

Unlike the party bans, those individual disqualifications don't take effect unless the Supreme Court approves them.

So we have sort of an opposite situation.

Committee also voted to disqualify...

Sami Abu-Shahada, number three on the list, the head of the Balad party, presumably yourself and Sami Abu-Shahada will appeal to the Supreme Court.

Do you have any expectations the Supreme Court will overturn today's ruling?

First of all, we don't have to appeal the procedure.