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Israel's Arab Balad party decided Thursday to withdraw its leader, Sami Abu Shehadeh, from the Oct. 27 general election after the Supreme Court indicated that a majority of judges supported barring his candidacy.
Channel 12 reported that Balad, formally known as the National Democratic Assembly and running as part of the Joint List, agreed that Abu Shehadeh would accept the court's proposal to withdraw from the Knesset race.
The decision came after Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit told Abu Shehadeh during a hearing Thursday that most judges on the panel favored upholding his disqualification.
According to Israeli public broadcaster KAN, the court gave Abu Shehadeh until Friday to withdraw voluntarily and warned that otherwise it would issue a ruling barring his candidacy.
Israel's Central Elections Committee voted Sept. 23 to disqualify Abu Shehadeh and Joint List lawmaker Ofer Cassif.
The committee also voted to exclude the Joint List, led by Yousef Jabareen, and the United Arab List, led by Mansour Abbas, from the election.
Under Israeli electoral rules, a decision disqualifying an individual candidate takes effect only after High Court approval, while decisions barring electoral lists can be appealed before the court.
The High Court has previously overturned Central Elections Committee decisions excluding Arab candidates and parties.
The case against Abu Shehadeh centers on an article he published Oct. 8, 2023, a day after a Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip.
Right-wing groups, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's Jewish Power party, sought to disqualify him, alleging the article expressed support for the attack.
Abu Shehadeh denied the allegations.
Speaking before the court Thursday, he said he did not support “armed struggle” and acknowledged that one paragraph in the article had been incorrectly worded.
He said his intention had been to call for moving the conflict toward a political process.
KAN reported that judges considered some passages in the article to provoke “displeasure and revulsion.”
Adalah, the rights group representing Abu Shehadeh, argued that the request to bar him relied on a single article that contained no explicit call to support armed struggle.
Israel's attorney general supported disqualifying Abu Shehadeh's candidacy.
Arab lawmakers and supporters demonstrated outside the Supreme Court in West Jerusalem as hearings on the disqualification decisions began.
Ben-Gvir arrived at the scene and waved an Israeli flag in front of the protesters, according to a correspondent of Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency.
Arab citizens make up about 20% of Israel's population. Voters are scheduled to elect members of the 120-seat Knesset on Oct. 27.
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