Arab parties disqualified from elections

Central Elections Committee determines Balad, United Arab List-Ta'al parties ineligible to run in February 2009, on grounds that they don't recognize the state and call for armed conflict against it

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3654866,00.html

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"The party lists for the Arab parties Balad and United Arab List-Ta'al have been disqualified from running in Israel's upcoming elections in February, the country's Central Elections Committee ruled Monday, following a heated meeting on Monday.

Balad was disqualified by a vote of 26 to three, with one abstention, while 21 committee members voted in favor of disqualifying the United Arab List-Ta'al, with eight members voting against and two members abstaining. The Central Elections Committee is comprised of members of all party factions.

During the meeting, MK Ahmad Tibi (UAL-Ta'al) addressed the ongoing operation in Gaza, saying, "we object to targeting civilians and you are committing genocide in Gaza. You're murdering children."

<snip>

"Representatives of the Arab parties walked out of the committee meeting when a vote in favor of their disqualification appeared imminent. Shortly afterwards, there was a heated confrontation between Tibi, along with Balad Chairman Jamal Zahalka on one side, and MK David Tal (Kadima).

"You drink Palestinian blood. You are a racist," Zahalka said to Tal. "You went to war as an elections campaign strategy," added Tibi. "Every vote for Kadima is a bullet in the chest of a Palestinian child.

Tibi later told the press in response to the decision that "this is a racist country. We are accustomed to these types of struggles and we will win."

"This decision strives for a Knesset without Arabs that will only lead to the increased solidarity between the Arab public and its leadership," he added."


Don't disqualify the Arab lists

<snip>

"The Central Elections Committee will deliberate on three petitions today calling for the disqualification of Balad's candidate list (two of them filed by the far-right parties Yisrael Beiteinu and the National Union), and on a petition against United Arab List-Ta'al's election list (filed by the National Union). In recent years it has turned into an indecent ceremony on election eve: Right-wing parties try to ban Balad or United Arab List-Ta'al, as part of their efforts to get headlines. This time the "ceremony" will be acted out under the shadow of the caustic debate on the military operation in the Gaza Strip.

The degree to which these petitions are pointless is reflected in a letter by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to the elections committee in which he asks that the petitions be rejected. Mazuz repeatedly notes that the evidence in the petitions is significantly weaker than the material presented to the High Court of Justice in 2003. In that instance, the court authorized Balad's election list and MK Ahmed Tibi's participation in the United Arab List-Ta'al election list. As such, it's not that the petitions' authors see a realistic chance that these two parties will be rejected; they want to declare that they believe these election lists should not be allowed in the Knesset.

This reflects a dangerous level of shortsightedness and narrow-mindedness. The state has a clear interest in having the Arab community's representatives - its genuine representatives - participate in the political game and serve in the Knesset. Israel has a clear interest in not pushing these representatives out, forcing them to create an independent political system.

It is precisely the intense debates between the extreme right and Arab parties that exemplify Israeli democracy and its ability to include such disparate factions under one roof.

In the spirit of the High Court's past rulings, we can assume that even if the Central Elections Committee disqualifies the election lists of Balad and United Arab List-Ta'al, the Court will approve their participation. Nonetheless, the elections committee should spare us this unnecessary battle. The decision on which party lists can take part in elections is one of the committee's most important tasks. The committee should take its work seriously, exercise the necessary open-mindedness, and prove that Israeli democracy includes the Arab parties, even if it is sometimes very difficult for us to accept them.

It is especially in these days that such a decision is so important, when the Arab parties are conducting a legitimate struggle against Operation Cast Lead."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054580.html

as to their status in Israel

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as anyone with any knowledge of the two situations knows. And it's likely, as the article states, that the High Court will overturn this.
Yes, it sucks. No it's nothing new. And no, it's not like the Nuremberg Laws which stripped Jews of citizenship.

All three motions claimed that Balad must be disqualified on grounds that it does not recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland, and that it advocates an armed conflict against it. Israel's High Court of Justice, in the past, has overturned votes to disqualify Balad from national elections that were based on similar grounds.

Doesn't bode well for the future.

Nonetheless, the decision is anti-democratic and I hope the High Court overturns it as previously.

Besides, once you start that game, you are on a slippery slope of banning lots of parties. Where does it end? E.g. some may consider the RW settlers to be fundamentally traitors to Israel (I do) - should the next step to be banning the parties that represent them?

MK Ahmad Tibi said in response to the election committee's decision to disqualify his party United Arab List-Ta'al from the upcoming elections, "This is a racist country. We are accustomed to these types of struggles and we will win."

Tibi added, "This decision strives for a Knesset without Arabs that will only lead to the increased solidarity between the Arab public and its leadership." (Sharon Roffe-Ofir)

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3654863,00.html

Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman MK Avigdor Lieberman said in response to the disqualification of Arab part Balad from the upcoming Knesset elections, "Now that it has been decided that the Balad terrorist organization will not be able to run, the first battle is over."

Lieberman added, "The next battle is making Balad illegal because it is a terrorist organization whose objective is harming the State of Israel." Yisrael Beiteinu is the party that petitioned the elections committee to disqualify Balad. (Yael Berenovsky)

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3654875,00.html

from the middle east's "only democracy" :sarcasm:

:eyes:

I could see some people favor them as a protest against the actions in Gaza, which would explain why some parties want them barred.

One land, one state, democratic and secular.

and Israel is more than just your description of it. It's certainly no worse than the U.S., let alone a dozen or more other countries. So why the insistance that Israel be dissolved? A two state solution may be harder than ever to achieve, but a one state solution? The bloodshed involved in any such attempt- which Israelis hugely oppose- would be massive.

I don't think we ban black or Hispanic political parties in the US.

I am serious about the one-state solution. Don't the vast majority of Palestinians and Israelis say they only want to live in peace?

It would require some settling of old claims...compensation, something about the right of return.

Is a single secular democratic state too much to ask? Why?

One objection is that Arabs would outnumber Jews. But that presupposes that everyone is unified in ethnic blocs, and that certainly isn't the case now. I can envision a democratic secular party attracting people from both groups. Hell, maybe it could even drive the crazies on both sides to the margins.

I don't claim to be an expert on the intricacies of a six decades of I/P history, so can somebody tell me why one-state is off the table?

The vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians do not. Gee, why would what they want be more germane than what we want? Because, yeah, in the most perfect of all worlds, a one state solution with a secular gov't would be great. In the real world decades worth of enmity and substantial minorities of hard liners on both sides make it utterly impossible at this time. Maybe a few decades down the road, but not now. As I said before, the bloodshed would be horrific.