Balad chief Barred over alleged support for terror
By Ariela Karmel
September 23, 2026
Sohlberg, attorney general, all opposition parties back disqualification of Joint List party’s No. 3 in unusual consensus; panel also disqualifies Hadash MK Ofer Cassif
The Central Elections Committee voted 30-4 Wednesday to disqualify the largely Arab Balad party chairman and Joint List No. 3 Sami Abu Shehadeh from running in the October 27 election, with the support of all opposition parties and rare backing from Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, who heads the panel.
The CEC accepted both grounds cited in the petition to ban Abu Shehadeh from running: supporting armed struggle by an enemy state or terrorist organization against Israel, and negating Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state.
Sohlberg took part in the vote — the first time in decades that a committee chairman has done so — saying Abu Shehadeh had failed to adequately answer allegations that he expressed support for Hamas’s armed struggle against Israel in an article he published a day after the October 7, 2023, massacre.
The decision stands out among the numerous disqualification petitions before the CEC this week for the unusually broad political and legal support behind it, potentially setting up a less predictable Supreme Court review than is typical for such decisions.
The petition, filed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, centered on an Arabic-language article Abu Shehadeh published on October 8, 2023, in which he described the assault a day earlier as “an important historic event militarily, politically and strategically” and wrote that others could learn from Hamas’s success in surprising Israel.
All opposition parties — Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar, Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad, Yair Golan’s Democrats, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White — backed the petition.
While Gantz and Liberman are supporting other disqualification efforts brought by coalition parties, the petition against Abu Shehadeh is the only such challenge to also be backed by Yashar, B’Yachad and the Democrats.
The petition is also the only challenge before the committee this week to receive the backing of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who penned an opinion Tuesday supporting Abu Shehadeh’s disqualification while concluding that the other petitions lacked sufficient grounds
The backing of Sohlberg and Baharav-Miara raises the prospect that the Supreme Court may uphold the decision, despite its historically high threshold for disqualifying candidates and its repeated overturning of such decisions by the committee.
Any decision to disqualify an individual candidate requires the court’s approval before taking effect, while bans on party slates can be appealed to the court.
Abu Shehadeh, who denies supporting the attack or political violence, called his disqualification an attempt to “silence” him and Arab society’s political voice. “I have never called for violence or terrorism. I oppose armed struggle, and remain committed to political and civil struggle for peace, justice and equality,” he said.
“The attempt to disqualify me is an attempt to undermine the representation and political voice of Arab society,” added Abu Shehadeh, who leads the hardline Balad party and holds the No. 3 spot on the Joint List slate, an alliance of Balad and the Arab-majority Hadash and Ta’al parties.
The Adalah rights group, whose general director Hassan Jabareen represented Abu Shehadeh, condemned the decision.
“The article contains no direct call for violence, nor any statements that could amount to grounds for disqualification,” Jabareen said, arguing that the attorney general had relied in part on what Abu Shehadeh did not write — an explicit condemnation of the October 7 attack — as evidence against him.
He also accused the attorney general of applying a higher standard to Abu Shehadeh than to far-right candidates whom she opposed disqualifying, while overlooking those “who incited the gravest crimes against Palestinians,” specifically citing Ben Gvir, who was convicted in 2007 of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization, and Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich.
Among other things, Ben Gvir said in August that Israel should kill “30 to 40” people in Gaza every night, including individuals who posed no immediate threat, saying some were “not worthy of life” and “not even people,” while Smotrich said last year that Gaza would be “totally destroyed,” previously called for the Palestinian town of Huwara to be “wiped out,” and said in 2024 that causing two million Gazan civilians to die of hunger unless the hostages were returned “might be justified and moral.”
Panel separately votes to disqualify Ofer Cassif
The committee earlier Wednesday also voted 19-5 to disqualify another Joint List candidate, Hadash MK Ofer Cassif, approving a petition filed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.
The petition sought to bar Cassif, No. 6 on the Joint List slate and among its only Jewish candidates, on the same grounds as those for banning Abu Shehadeh. The petition was backed by opposition parties Benny Gantz’s Blue and White and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu.
The disqualification was widely expected, given the politicized nature of the committee, which is made up of representatives of Knesset parties and in which the coalition holds a majority.
The decision must also be approved by the Supreme Court before Cassif can be barred and is unlikely to be upheld, given the court’s historically high threshold for disqualification. The court overturned a CEC decision barring Cassif from running in 2019.
“The committee is political and I had no expectations from it,” Cassif said following the vote, according to the Kan public broadcaster, adding that he is “convinced that the Supreme Court will overturn the decision.”
Cassif, one of the Knesset’s most vocal critics of the war in Gaza, rejected the allegations during the hearing, which he called “politically motivated,” and called the coalition’s portrayal of his opposition to government policy as “support for the enemy, disloyalty and harm to the state” a “blatant distortion of reality.”
The Central Elections Committee voted 30-4 Wednesday to disqualify the largely Arab Balad party chairman and Joint List No. 3 Sami Abu Shehadeh from running in the October 27 election, with the support of all opposition parties and rare backing from Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, who heads the panel.
The CEC accepted both grounds cited in the petition to ban Abu Shehadeh from running: supporting armed struggle by an enemy state or terrorist organization against Israel, and negating Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state.
Sohlberg took part in the vote — the first time in decades that a committee chairman has done so — saying Abu Shehadeh had failed to adequately answer allegations that he expressed support for Hamas’s armed struggle against Israel in an article he published a day after the October 7, 2023, massacre.
The decision stands out among the numerous disqualification petitions before the CEC this week for the unusually broad political and legal support behind it, potentially setting up a less predictable Supreme Court review than is typical for such decisions.
The petition, filed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, centered on an Arabic-language article Abu Shehadeh published on October 8, 2023, in which he described the assault a day earlier as “an important historic event militarily, politically and strategically” and wrote that others could learn from Hamas’s success in surprising Israel.
All opposition parties — Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar, Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad, Yair Golan’s Democrats, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White — backed the petition.
Chairman of the Central Elections Committee Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg arrives for a hearing at the Central Elections Committee at the Knesset in Jerusalem, September 23, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
While Gantz and Liberman are supporting other disqualification efforts brought by coalition parties, the petition against Abu Shehadeh is the only such challenge to also be backed by Yashar, B’Yachad and the Democrats.
The petition is also the only challenge before the committee this week to receive the backing of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who penned an opinion Tuesday supporting Abu Shehadeh’s disqualification while concluding that the other petitions lacked sufficient grounds.
The backing of Sohlberg and Baharav-Miara raises the prospect that the Supreme Court may uphold the decision, despite its historically high threshold for disqualifying candidates and its repeated overturning of such decisions by the committee.
Any decision to disqualify an individual candidate requires the court’s approval before taking effect, while bans on party slates can be appealed to the court.
Abu Shehadeh, who denies supporting the attack or political violence, called his disqualification an attempt to “silence” him and Arab society’s political voice. “I have never called for violence or terrorism. I oppose armed struggle, and remain committed to political and civil struggle for peace, justice and equality,” he said.
“The attempt to disqualify me is an attempt to undermine the representation and political voice of Arab society,” added Abu Shehadeh, who leads the hardline Balad party and holds the No. 3 spot on the Joint List slate, an alliance of Balad and the Arab-majority Hadash and Ta’al parties.
The Adalah rights group, whose general director Hassan Jabareen represented Abu Shehadeh, condemned the decision.
“The article contains no direct call for violence, nor any statements that could amount to grounds for disqualification,” Jabareen said, arguing that the attorney general had relied in part on what Abu Shehadeh did not write — an explicit condemnation of the October 7 attack — as evidence against him.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir arrives for a hearing on a request to disqualify Balad chairman Sami Abou Shahadeh at the Central Elections Committee at the Knesset in Jerusalem, September 23, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
He also accused the attorney general of applying a higher standard to Abu Shehadeh than to far-right candidates whom she opposed disqualifying, while overlooking those “who incited the gravest crimes against Palestinians,” specifically citing Ben Gvir, who was convicted in 2007 of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization, and Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich.
Among other things, Ben Gvir said in August that Israel should kill “30 to 40” people in Gaza every night, including individuals who posed no immediate threat, saying some were “not worthy of life” and “not even people,” while Smotrich said last year that Gaza would be “totally destroyed,” previously called for the Palestinian town of Huwara to be “wiped out,” and said in 2024 that causing two million Gazan civilians to die of hunger unless the hostages were returned “might be justified and moral.”
Panel separately votes to disqualify Ofer Cassif
The committee earlier Wednesday also voted 19-5 to disqualify another Joint List candidate, Hadash MK Ofer Cassif, approving a petition filed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.
The petition sought to bar Cassif, No. 6 on the Joint List slate and among its only Jewish candidates, on the same grounds as those for banning Abu Shehadeh. The petition was backed by opposition parties Benny Gantz’s Blue and White and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu.
The disqualification was widely expected, given the politicized nature of the committee, which is made up of representatives of Knesset parties and in which the coalition holds a majority.
MK Ofer Cassif is seen outside the Central Elections Committee after his candidacy was disqualified on September 23, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The decision must also be approved by the Supreme Court before Cassif can be barred and is unlikely to be upheld, given the court’s historically high threshold for disqualification. The court overturned a CEC decision barring Cassif from running in 2019.
“The committee is political and I had no expectations from it,” Cassif said following the vote, according to the Kan public broadcaster, adding that he is “convinced that the Supreme Court will overturn the decision.”
Cassif, one of the Knesset’s most vocal critics of the war in Gaza, rejected the allegations during the hearing, which he called “politically motivated,” and called the coalition’s portrayal of his opposition to government policy as “support for the enemy, disloyalty and harm to the state” a “blatant distortion of reality.”
“My public duty is not to the government and its lackeys, or to the ruling hegemony, but to ensure that our sons and daughters live in justice and peace and are not pushed, amid mutterings of necessity and revenge, into war crimes,” he said.
By doing so, he was “serving society more faithfully, humanely, democratically and Jewishly than any of the signatories to this foolish disqualification petition,” Cassif added.
The petitions against Cassif and Balad are among several being considered as the CEC holds two days of hearings at the Knesset on Wednesday and Thursday on the potential disqualification of parties and candidates from running in the October 27 election, with most of the challenges targeting Arab parties and candidates.
The panel will later on Wednesday vote on several petitions brought by Likud, Otzma Yehudit and the Choose Life Forum to bar Mansour Abbas’s Islamist Ra’am party, as well as challenges targeting the entire Joint List and Abu Shehadeh’s Balad.
Separate petitions to disqualify Otzma Yehudit, the Democrats and the Religious Zionism-Zehut slate will be voted upon on Thursday.
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