Likud to seek exclusion of Arab parties from Israeli elections — Jerusalem Post
Likud, the ruling party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said it would appeal to the Central Elections Committee to bar the Arab parties Ra’am and the Joint List from participating in the elections scheduled for October. This was reported by The Jerusalem Post.
Likud explained its intention by saying that, in the party’s view, there should be no one in the Knesset who harms Israel Defense Forces service members and cannot call Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations. The party also reiterated its claim that Netanyahu’s rival for the post of prime minister, Gadi Eisenkot, is trying to form a government with the participation of Arab parties, which it called his “natural partners.”
Joint List reaction
The Joint List, which includes the Hadash, Ta’al and Balad factions, called the intention to seek its exclusion from the elections a racist move. In a party statement, it stressed that attempts to silence it would not succeed.
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Representatives of the Joint List also said that the country’s Arab public has faced a campaign of incitement, delegitimization and attempts to harm its representatives in the Knesset in recent years. They added that their opponents, in their view, fear not only losing power but also the political influence of the Arab population and the idea of Arabs and Jews living together.
Other appeals to the elections committee
Last week, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had already submitted a petition to the Central Elections Committee to ban Ra’am from participating in the elections. The appeal claims that the party denies Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and supports armed struggle against it.
The Central Elections Committee may approve such petitions, but the High Court has overturned similar decisions to bar Arab parties in the past. Later, the left-wing Democratic Party led by Yair Golan said it would file a petition to exclude Ben-Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party from the elections. Among the grounds cited by the party were harming democracy, denying the democratic character of the state and incitement to racism.
