Israeli Press

Ynet reports Israel's right plans repeated bids to disqualify Arab parties

Times of Palestine6h ago

Published Saturday, August 29, 2026 · 12:30 Jerusalem time

Graphic: Times of Palestine

Original Reporting

By the Times of Palestine Newsdesk · 2 min read

The Newsdesk gathers reporting from wire services and primary sources and rewrites every story in-house before publication. How our journalism is made →

Israeli readers were told this weekend to expect a campaign to bar Arab parties from the ballot before the 27 October election, and to expect it to be run inside the body that decides who may run.

The report is by Tova Zimuky, the legal affairs correspondent of the Israeli news site Ynet. She writes that assessments in the political system point to persistent attempts by the right-wing coalition factions to disqualify Arab lists and candidates, with Mansour Abbas's Ra'am the principal target.

The venue matters more than the ambition. Israel's Central Elections Committee is composed politically, in proportion to Knesset representation, which means the outgoing coalition holds a majority in the room that rules on disqualification petitions. It is chaired by Noam Sohlberg, the deputy president of the Supreme Court.

Zimuky reports that right-wing factions are already working against Sohlberg and the committee's professional staff — laying the blame in advance, in her telling, for a failure that has not happened yet.

The lawyer's objection#

The report quotes Amir Fuchs, a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, on what kind of body this is.

The disqualifying body is essentially political. Its decisions may be influenced by political rather than substantive or legal considerations, and it has no duty to give reasons. That is highly problematic.

Amir Fuchs, Israel Democracy Institute, quoted by Ynet

Israel's Supreme Court has overturned most of the committee's disqualifications of Arab lists on appeal. Alongside the petitions, the coalition has pursued an amendment to Article 7A of Basic Law: The Knesset that would loosen the evidence a disqualification requires — legislation Fuchs and his institute have argued against in public.

For Palestinian citizens of Israel the effect Zimuky describes does not depend on the petitions succeeding. A disqualification fight running through September is itself a message to a public whose turnout both blocs are counting, and a filed petition costs its authors nothing.