JERUSALEM — Israel bars Arab parties election access at a moment when those parties could decide who governs next. On Wednesday, September 23, Israel’s Central Elections Committee voted 18–5 to disqualify both Ra’am, formally the United Arab List, and the Joint List from the October 27 election for the 26th Knesset. It separately barred Hadash lawmaker Ofer Cassif and Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh.
The decisions are dramatic, but they are not final. Candidate disqualifications require Supreme Court approval, while party lists may appeal. The High Court of Justice is expected to hear the cases next week, and Israel’s judicial history strongly favors participation: the court has repeatedly overturned committee efforts to exclude Arab lists, including a unanimous 2022 decision restoring Balad to the ballot.
That legal expectation does not make the votes inconsequential. They force Arab parties to defend their legitimacy in court three weeks before a national election, allow every side to campaign against the other’s place in the democratic system, and turn a legal mechanism into an instrument of coalition strategy. With current polling showing neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition nor the opposition bloc at the 61 seats required for a majority, the dispute is also a fight over the possible balance of power.
What the Central Elections Committee voted to disqualify
The committee first voted 18–5 to exclude Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am. Ra’am’s recent history is central to the stakes: in 2021 it became the first independent Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition, supporting the Naftali Bennett–Yair Lapid government that ended Netanyahu’s 12 consecutive years in office. Its four-seat role then demonstrated that an Arab party could move from the margins of coalition speculation into the machinery of government.
The committee then voted by the same 18–5 margin to bar the Joint List, the alliance of Hadash, Ta’al and Balad. A petition filed by Netanyahu’s Likud faction to ban that list had been accepted 15–8. In practical terms, excluding both lists would remove the two principal electoral vehicles for Arab citizens from the ballot.
The panel also addressed individuals. It voted to have Ofer Cassif disqualified and voted 30–4 to have Sami Abu Shehadeh barred. The petition against Abu Shehadeh came from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party. Justice Noam Sohlberg, the Supreme Court justice who chairs the committee, specifically backed that disqualification—an unusual intervention because committee chairs traditionally seek distance from the partisan voting.
Likud and Otzma Yehudit argued that statements and conduct by the parties or candidates crossed constitutional limits. The targeted parties, candidates and Adalah, the legal center representing them, reject that reading. Adalah says the Ra’am petition supplies no evidence that the party supports armed struggle, while the case against the Joint List relies heavily on older material. These are contested legal claims, not findings by a court.
Section 7A Basic Law Knesset: a democratic safeguard with a political gatekeeper
The petitions rely on Section 7A of Basic Law: The Knesset. It permits exclusion of a list or candidate whose objectives or actions deny Israel’s existence as a “Jewish and democratic state,” incite racism, or support armed struggle against Israel by an enemy state or terrorist organization. The provision embodies the idea of a democracy defending itself against actors who would use elections to attack its constitutional order.
The difficult question is not whether a democracy may set such boundaries; many do. It is who applies them first, with what evidence, and under what institutional incentives. Israel’s Central Elections Committee is not an independent professional commission. Its members are drawn from parties represented in the outgoing Knesset, in proportions that reflect parliamentary power, although a Supreme Court justice chairs it. The current panel is dominated by politicians from Netanyahu’s coalition.
Israel Democracy Institute scholars Ofir Haddad and Amir Fuchs, cited by Globes, argue that this makes Israel’s system uniquely problematic. They contrast it with South Africa, where a professional electoral commission administers disqualification, and Germany, where a constitutional court decides. In Israel, political rivals make the first judgment and the court becomes the corrective.
That structure creates a recurring pattern: the committee can impose the accusation and the disruption even when judges later erase the formal ban. The reputational cost, campaign distraction and message that a constituency’s representatives are presumptively outside the system cannot be fully reversed by a later legal ruling.
Ra’am, Joint List and Supreme Court: the precedent is clear, the cases are not identical
Since 2003, the Supreme Court has repeatedly set a high evidentiary threshold for excluding parties and has reversed committee decisions involving Arab lists or candidates. Attempts in 2003, 2009 and 2015 reinforced the principle that disqualification is an exceptional remedy, not an ordinary campaign tactic. In 2022, the court unanimously overturned the committee’s decision to bar Balad.
That history explains why legal observers and the Financial Times treat reversal as the more likely outcome for the two lists. It does not guarantee identical treatment for each candidate. Individual cases turn on particular words, actions and evidentiary records. The attorney general’s position, the breadth of political support for a petition and Sohlberg’s own vote may all shape the court’s scrutiny, especially in Abu Shehadeh’s case.
Abu Shehadeh told Al Jazeera that the attempt was meant to silence criticism of government policy and promised court challenges and public protest. He told The Times of Israel: “I have never called for violence or terrorism. I oppose armed struggle.” Supporters of the petition say his record must be tested against Section 7A. The Supreme Court’s task is to decide whether the evidence meets the law’s unusually high threshold, not whether his politics are popular.
Ra’am called its exclusion “political and unacceptable” and said the objective was to stop it influencing the balance of power and changing the government. Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen asked how the committee could bar parties representing more than 1.25 million voters. Adalah says it will contest every vote in court.
Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit allowed: the asymmetry becomes the story
The committee separately rejected a bid to disqualify Ben-Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party. That outcome—Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit allowed while both main Arab lists were barred—has become inseparable from the argument over consistency. Haaretz described it as a dangerous election double standard. Supporters of the committee’s decisions would answer that every petition must be assessed on its own evidence and statutory grounds.
Both propositions can be tested. Different evidence can legitimately produce different outcomes. Yet a party-based committee also has an obvious conflict: its members are voting on rivals whose presence or absence may alter their own coalition prospects. That conflict makes transparency about evidence, standards and voting rationales essential.
The asymmetry matters beyond optics. Ultra-nationalist politicians have increasingly portrayed Arab citizens and their political representatives as enemies of the state, as Bloomberg noted in its account of the pre-election divisions. When the institutional process removes Arab lists but clears a far-right Jewish party, critics see confirmation that the mechanism polices identity unevenly. Defenders see a lawful distinction among records. The court will have to explain which view the evidence supports.
The numbers behind the Israel October 2026 election
The Israel election on October 27, 2026 will choose 120 members of the Knesset; 61 seats are required to form a governing majority. A Channel 12 poll cited by Al Jazeera projected seven seats for the Joint List and five for Ra’am, against 50 for Netanyahu’s current coalition bloc. Polls are snapshots, not results, and Arab parties would not automatically back a single opposition candidate. But 12 projected seats are enough to change which coalitions are mathematically possible.
That is why the Knesset 26th election polls make this more than a dispute about ballot access. If both lists run and clear the threshold, Netanyahu’s opponents may need some form of Arab-party cooperation, whether coalition membership, outside support or abstention in a confidence vote. If both are excluded, those routes disappear before a vote is cast. Netanyahu’s bloc could benefit arithmetically even without winning additional supporters.
The losers would not be limited to party leaders. More than 1.25 million voters are said to be represented by the lists. Exclusion could depress turnout among citizens who conclude the system has rejected their choices; it could also mobilize voters angered by the ban. The evidence available today does not establish which response will dominate. Arab turnout has historically been sensitive to unity, fragmentation and expectations of influence, so the court’s timing and the parties’ ability to present a common strategy may matter as much as the legal result.
Ra’am’s 2021 precedent remains the strongest counterpoint to claims that Arab parties are structurally irrelevant. Abbas showed that a small parliamentary faction can trade support for policy commitments and help determine a prime minister. That precedent is precisely why every seat in the present deadlock carries more weight than its number suggests.
What happens next: a likely reversal, with damage that may endure
The immediate sequence is clear. Candidate exclusions go to the Supreme Court for approval; party lists appeal; the High Court hears the cases next week. The Central Elections Committee’s official 26th Knesset portal provides the institutional framework, though the September 23 plenary decisions were not yet posted in its public decisions archive at publication.
The base case, grounded in precedent rather than certainty, is that the court restores both lists to the ballot. A narrower ruling could distinguish among the parties and individual candidates. The least likely but most disruptive scenario is approval of broad exclusions that leave Arab voters without either main list weeks before polling day.
Even a full reversal would not return the campaign to its previous state. Netanyahu’s allies can say they tried to enforce constitutional boundaries; Arab parties can say their participation survived another politically driven challenge; opposition parties must explain how they voted and whether they would rely on Arab support to form a government. The hearing itself keeps those questions at the center of the campaign.
The core democratic test is therefore larger than who appears on the ballot. It is whether a system that gives politicians the first power to exclude rivals can apply a neutral legal standard—and whether judicial review arrives soon and clearly enough to preserve equal political participation. On October 27, voters will choose a parliament. Before then, judges will decide whether the competition begins with all of its principal constituencies represented.
Sources and reporting limits
- Al Jazeera: party reactions, legal challenges, poll projection and court timetable
- Financial Times: committee composition, coalition stakes and the 18–5 votes
- Bloomberg: pre-election divisions and ultra-nationalist framing
- Globes: High Court expectations and Israel Democracy Institute analysis
- The Times of Israel: committee tallies, candidate cases and Otzma Yehudit proceedings
- Knesset: English text and explanation of Section 7A
- Central Elections Committee: official 26th Knesset election portal
This is a fixed September 24, 2026 reporting snapshot. Committee disqualifications are not final court rulings. Poll projections can change, and analysis of coalition incentives or reputational effects is Signal Post News analysis rather than a reported outcome.