BICOM

The Central Election Committee disqualified the Joint Arab List’s Haneen Zoabi and Yahad’s Baruch Marzel from running in the upcoming general election yesterday, in a move that is widely expected to be reversed by the Supreme Court.

Zoabi was accused of incitement to violence, support for terrorism and for rejecting Israel as a Jewish democratic state. She was disqualified by a vote of 27-6

Marzel was accused of being a former activist in the far-right Kach movement, which was banned as a racist organisation in the 1980s, of rejecting Israel’s democratic nature and of incitement to racism. He was disqualified by a vote of 17-16.

The Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein argued on behalf of the State that neither candidate should be disqualified as neither reached the high bar needed to ban someone from running for election.

The Central Election Committee is a politicised body with representatives of the current Knesset parties sitting and voting on the committee. At the hearing, representatives of each of the parties made their case for the disqualification or retention of each of the two candidates and voted along party lines. The Committee is chaired by an independent chair, Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran.

Haneen Zoabi is a controversial Arab member of Knesset, with a history of making inflammatory statements. She also participated in the Mavi Marmara flotilla in May 2010. Baruch Marzel is a far-right activist known for protesting at Arab-Jewish weddings and his opposition to gay rights.

Despite the drama of the Committee hearing and decision, it is widely expected that both candidates will nevertheless run in the election as they appeal to the High Court of Justice. Both have been invalidated by the Central Election Committee in previous elections and have had the decisions overturned by the High Court before; in the 2013 election, Haneen Zoabi’s ban was overturned unanimously by the court.