Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party has filed a motion with Israel’s electoral authorities attempting to bar the major Arab-Israeli parties from standing in next month’s Knesset elections.
Likud said on Sunday that it would petition the Central Elections Committee (CEC) to disqualify Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, and the Joint List from the election.
“There is no room in the Knesset for those who harm IDF soldiers and are unable to say that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organisations,” Likud said.
The move comes as Netanyahu faces a closely fought election in which neither his right-wing bloc nor the main opposition grouping, led by former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, appears certain to win the 61 seats needed to form a government.
Recent polling has repeatedly pointed to a fragmented Knesset in which Arab parties could become pivotal.
A Channel 12 poll published last week put Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party on 25 seats and Likud on 21. Netanyahu’s bloc was projected to win 52 seats, compared with 57 for the non-Arab opposition, while the Arab parties were projected to take 11 seats.
That arithmetic means that, unless lawmakers defect from Netanyahu’s bloc, an anti-Netanyahu coalition could require the support of at least one Arab-led party.
Last week, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party separately petitioned the CEC to disqualify Ra’am, alleging that it supports armed struggle against Israel.
The petitions will first be considered by the CEC, whose members are appointed according to the parties’ representation in the Knesset. But even if the committee votes to disqualify either party, the decision is expected to face a legal challenge and the High Court has repeatedly overturned several CEC decisions seeking to bar Arab parties.
Most recently, in 2022, the court unanimously reversed a CEC decision to prevent the nationalist Balad party from contesting that year’s election.
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