The Central Elections Committee voted Wednesday to bar Ra’am and the Joint List from competing in the October 27 election.
The Attorney-General’s Office said the evidence against both lists did not meet the stringent legal threshold for disqualification.
The committee barred each list by a vote of 18-5, with one abstention.
The decisions do not automatically go to the Supreme Court for approval, because they concern entire candidate lists rather than individual candidates. Ra’am and the Joint List may appeal, and the court is expected to hear election-disqualification proceedings next week.
MK Mansour Abbas is the chairman of Ra’am (United Arab List). The Joint List comprises three constituent parties: Hadash, Ta’al, and Balad.
The committee considered three requests against Ra’am that were filed by the Likud, Otzma Yehudit, and the Choosing Life forum of bereaved families and victims of terrorism.
Taken together, the applications invoked all three grounds for disqualification under Section 7A of Basic Law: The Knesset: rejecting Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state; inciting racism; and supporting armed struggle against Israel by an enemy state or terrorist organization.
The applicants cited alleged connections among Ra’am, the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement, and charitable organizations that they said had transferred assistance to bodies linked to Hamas.
They also cited statements by Abbas that showed his party presented different positions to Hebrew- and Arabic-speaking audiences.
Ra'am denies allegations of supporting terrorism
Ra’am refuted the allegations and said the petitions had failed to present clear and convincing evidence connecting the party to support for terrorism or any other prohibited objective.
Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel attorney Suhad Bishara, representing Ra’am, told the committee the petitioners had not established the unequivocal factual record required for disqualification. She cited Abbas’s condemnation of the October 7 massacre and his calls for the release of hostages held in Gaza.
Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Attorney Amit Aisman opposed barring Ra’am. They said they had found no sufficient evidence connecting the list to support for armed struggle or allowing the conduct of the charitable organizations cited by the applicants to be attributed to the party.
The Joint List was barred following a separate request filed by the Likud, which said it had rejected Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state and supported armed struggle against it.
The request relied largely on Balad’s platform, statements attributed to it, and material concerning MK Ofer Cassif.
A representative of the Attorney-General’s Office told the committee the request should be rejected, previous rulings had found that Balad’s platform did not provide a sufficient evidentiary basis for disqualification, and agreed with the Joint List’s argument that the platform was old and did not reflect its current political agenda.
The Supreme Court has interpreted Section 7A narrowly, requiring clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence that a prohibited objective is a dominant feature of a list’s activity rather than a marginal position or an isolated statement.
In 2019, the committee voted to disqualify a joint Ra’am-Balad slate, but the High Court of Justice overturned the decision and allowed it to compete.
Ra'am Chairman Mansour Abbas responds to disqualification decision
Wednesday’s decision was “political, improper, and anti-democratic,” Abbas said, adding that it contradicted the attorney-general’s position and rested on false allegations.
He accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies of seeking to prevent the formation of what he called “the next change government” by removing Ra’am from the race. The decision was an attack on Arab-Jewish coexistence and democratic participation, he said.
The Joint List said its disqualification was “a political, racist, and anti-democratic decision,” adding that it expected the High Court to overturn it.
Joint List calls ban 'attempt by Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, to steal election, disenfranchise over a million Arab Israelis'
The vote was an attempt to exclude the political representation of more than one million voters and was a continuation of a campaign by Netanyahu and the Right to delegitimize Arab citizens and suppress their turnout, the Joint List said.
Adalah, which represented all Arab parties and individuals before the committee, said: “The hearings, like the motions themselves, showed once again that this is an arbitrary, inciting, and racist process devoid of any legal process. The committee conducted an illegitimate political process aimed at persecuting ideas the majority does not accept, and it ended with the disqualification of all Palestinian representation in the Israeli Knesset.”
Earlier Wednesday, the committee voted to disqualify Cassif and Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh. Because those decisions concern individual candidates, they require the High Court’s approval before taking effect.
