HAIFA, The Israeli Supreme Court ruled this morning to overturn a ban on the Arab political party National Democratic Assembly (Balad) from participating in the Israeli national parliamentary elections slated for 1 November 2022, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said in a statement today.

Adalah said the Israeli Supreme Court historically overturned decisions by Israel’s Central Elections Committee (CEC) to disqualify Arab parties from running in the country’s national elections.

On 29 September, the CEC had voted nine to five to disqualify the party – commonly referred to as Balad or Tajammu’, and , led by MK Sami Abu Shehadeh – from participating in elections for the 25th Knesset. Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel appealed this decision on behalf of Balad to the Israeli Supreme Court on 4 October 2022.

Adalah General Director Hassan Jabareen, who represented Balad in its fight against the election ban, responded to the Israeli Supreme Court ruling: “The Israeli Supreme Court’s rejection of the attempt to ban Balad was made in light of the laconic request from a right-wing Israeli party that ignored all the court’s previous rulings on this very same question.”

“This latest attempt to ban an Arab party joins all the similarly baseless attempts to ban Arab lists and candidates that the Israeli right wing submits every single election cycle. The sole purpose of these moves is to incite against Arab political representatives and push them beyond the boundaries of legitimate political discourse,” he added.

“Israel’s Central Elections Committee must be denied the authority to disqualify party lists and candidates, and it must be made unequivocally clear that parliamentary action promoting a vision of democracy and equality cannot be grounds for denying the right to participate in the political process.”

During the 6 October 2022 Supreme Court appeal hearing, Jabareen told the justices that “nothing presented in the motion for disqualification would stand up to examination of the Supreme Court; it has all been discussed previously and it was determined that there was no legal basis for disqualification.”

Source: Palestine News & Info Agency