ARAB PARTY’S ELECTION BAN OVERTURNED BY ISRAELI TOP COURT

Mon 10 October 2022:

The Israeli Supreme Court overturned a ban on the Arab party Balad running in the country’s parliamentary elections scheduled for November 1 on Sunday, Xinhua reportd.

The Central Elections Committee’s decision to bar Balad from running in the elections was overturned by the Supreme Court’s nine-judge panel, according to a statement issued by the court that did not provide any justification for the decision.

On September 29, the Central Elections Committee, which consists of lawmakers from various political parties and approves parties and candidates before elections, voted nine to five to disqualify the Arab party.

Hassan Jabareen, general director of Adalah, an Israeli Arab rights group that petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of Balad, said in a statement that the Central Elections Committee has tried to ban other Arab lists and candidates ahead of each of the election rounds over the past few years.

The purpose of the moves by the committee “is to incite against Arab political representatives and push them beyond the boundaries of legitimate political discourse,” he said.

Arab citizens of Israel, which compose about 20 percent of the country’s population, are Palestinians who remained in the territory after Israel’s Independence War in 1948.

The judges also overturned the Elections Committee’s decision that former lawmaker Amichai Chikli, who ran in 2021 with the Yamina party, could participate in the upcoming elections as a candidate for the right-wing Likud party, led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

After refusing to support the coalition, Chikli was expelled from Yamina, a pro-settler party led by the late Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, in April. A little more than two months later, the small coalition broke up, leading to the unprecedented fifth election in less than four years.\

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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