One threshold for Jews, another for Arabs: Israel's election machine purges a Palestinian leader

JERUSALEM: A prominent Palestinian Israeli politician has been forced to withdraw from Israel's October 27 elections over his remarks about the Gaza war, while far-right ministers with documented records of inciting violence against Palestinians have been cleared to run — a contrast Palestinian rights groups call a damning double standard at the heart of Israeli democracy. Sami Abu Shehadeh, leader of Balad — a Palestinian nationalist party advocating equal rights for all citizens of Israel — withdrew after the Supreme Court warned he could be disqualified, calling the process "a historical catastrophe for democracy". The disqualification push began at the Central Elections Committee, which last month voted to bar Abu Shehadeh, Hadash politician Ofer Cassif, and the two main Arab-majority electoral lists. The Supreme Court overturned the bans on the lists and on Cassif, but Abu Shehadeh, facing the court's adverse signal, chose to withdraw. The challenge was brought by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir over an article Abu Shehadeh published on October 8, 2023, in which he described the Hamas-led attacks as "an important historical event". Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara backed the disqualification, arguing the wording could amount to support for armed struggle. Abu Shehadeh told the court he did not support "armed struggle" and that a paragraph had been misworded. It was not enough. Petitions were also submitted seeking to disqualify the parties of Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. The Central Elections Committee rejected them, leaving both men on the ballot; the Attorney General found the attempts lacked sufficient legal basis. The asymmetry is stark. In 2025, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway sanctioned both ministers for repeatedly inciting violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Ben-Gvir has since proposed a seven-year plan for Palestinians to leave Gaza through "voluntary emigration"; Smotrich advocates displacing Palestinians from Gaza and annexing the West Bank, and both want Jewish settlements re-established in Gaza — proposals even Prime Minister Netanyahu has rejected. Abu Shehadeh accused the court of bowing to Ben-Gvir's pressure: "Someone [Ben-Gvir] who was calling for starving people to death in Gaza ... was able to disqualify me, a human rights activist for three decades." Adalah, the legal rights group representing him, called the withdrawal "a severe blow" to Palestinian citizens' right to political representation — "a deliberate attempt to delegitimise Palestinian citizens and their parliamentary representatives". Palestinian analyst Ahmed Najjar told Al Jazeera the case exposed the "two-tier nature of Israeli democracy": "It establishes one threshold for Jewish Israeli politicians and another for Palestinian citizens of Israel." Attempts to exclude Palestinian-led parties are not new: Adalah has documented challenges in the elections of 2003, 2013, 2015, 2020 and 2022. Palestinian citizens of Israel are roughly 20 percent of the population, yet the 3.25 percent national threshold forces smaller Arab parties into joint lists to survive. The message of Abu Shehadeh's forced exit is unmistakable: in Israel's democracy, some citizens' representatives are more disqualifiable than others.