Israel's Supreme Court opened hearings on Thursday (October 1) on appeals against the Central Elections Committee's decisions to bar Arab electoral lists and candidates from the October 27 Knesset election. A panel of nine justices first heard arguments from Balad party leader Sami Abu Shehadeh and his legal team, headed by Hassan Jabareen. According to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit told Abu Shehadeh in court that a majority of the judges favored disqualifying his candidacy — and gave him until Friday to withdraw voluntarily, warning that the court would otherwise issue a formal ruling disqualifying him.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara supported disqualifying Abu Shehadeh, citing an article he published on October 8, 2023 — the day after the Hamas attacks — which she said expressed support for armed struggle. But she opposed disqualifying Ofer Cassif and the Joint List, saying the evidence did not meet the law's stringent threshold. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose Otzma Yehudit party filed the disqualification petition, appeared in court wearing a lawyer's robe: "Sami Abu Shehadeh cannot be a member of Knesset. A supporter of terrorism belongs in prison, not in the Knesset."
At the center of the storm is that Arabic-language article, in which Abu Shehadeh described the October 7, 2023 assault as "an important historic event militarily, politically and strategically" and wrote that others could learn from Hamas's success in surprising Israel. Petitioners used it to accuse him of sympathizing with Hamas and failing to condemn the attacks. He denied this at the hearing, saying his words "may have been taken out of context" and that he is "completely opposed to acts of violence." On September 23, the Central Elections Committee voted 30-4 to disqualify him, accepting two grounds: supporting armed struggle by an enemy state or terrorist organization against Israel, and negating Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state. Notably, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg — who chairs the committee — cast a vote himself, the first time in decades a committee chairman has broken the neutrality convention. Every opposition party voted yes too, an unusually broad consensus.
Abu Shehadeh is not the only target. Last week the committee also voted to disqualify the two main Arab-majority lists — Ra'am and the Joint List (an alliance of Hadash, Ta'al and Balad) — along with Hadash's Jewish MK Ofer Cassif. Abu Shehadeh, a historian from Jaffa, served in the Knesset on the Joint List from September 2019 to November 2022; Balad was voted out of parliament in the 2022 election. As +972 Magazine noted, Palestinian lawmakers in Israel have long faced election bans — but this time is different. The rare alignment of cross-party and judicial support makes the Supreme Court's review unusually hard to predict. Israeli courts have historically set a very high bar for disqualifications and overturned most such decisions; in Abu Shehadeh's case, however, the attorney general, the committee's chairing justice and parties across the spectrum are on the same side.
Friday (October 2) is the deadline: if Abu Shehadeh does not withdraw, the Supreme Court will hand down a formal disqualification — a rare instance of the court upholding a ban on an Arab party leader. If he quits, the immediate storm passes, but the appeals of Ra'am, the Joint List and Cassif are still pending, and the court is widely expected to overturn the committee's decisions against them. With the October 27 election approaching, the political representation of Arab voters has become the campaign's most charged constitutional fight.