The disqualification of political parties and candidates from running for the Knesset by the Central Elections Committee is a routine occurrence in Israel.
Section 7a of the Basic Law states: The Knesset establishes three principal grounds for disqualification: denial of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; incitement to racism; and support for an armed struggle against the State of Israel by an enemy state or a terrorist organization.
Thus, in every election cycle, a familiar scenario unfolds in which the Central Elections Committee disqualifies parties from running for the Knesset, a decision that has almost always subsequently been overturned by the Supreme Court.
The first time the Supreme Court upheld the disqualification of a list from running for the Knesset was before the 1965 Knesset election. A panel headed by then-Supreme Court president Shimon Agranat ruled, by majority, that the Central Elections Committee had the authority to disqualify a list in an extreme case involving the denial of the state’s existence.
By doing so, the court upheld the decision to disqualify the Socialist list, half of whose candidates were members of the radical left-wing organization Al-Ard.
However, after the Central Elections Committee disqualified Meir Kahane’s Kach party and the Progressive List for Peace from participating in the 1984 election, a Supreme Court panel headed by then-president Meir Shamgar overturned the decision, ruling that the law did not authorize such disqualification.
This led the Knesset to enact Section 7a, which explicitly established the grounds on which the Central Elections Committee could disqualify a list.
Since then, although the Supreme Court allowed the Central Elections Committee to disqualify Kach in 1988 and again in 1992, Supreme Court justices repeatedly overturned decisions to prevent Arab parties and candidates from running for the Knesset, arguing that there was insufficient “critical mass” of evidence.
For example, in 2003, Supreme Court justices allowed Balad chairman Azmi Bishara to run by a vote of 7-4, with then-Supreme Court president Aharon Barak and his successor Dorit Beinisch among the majority. Three years later, Bishara was found to have assisted Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War, a development that demonstrated the absurdity of that decision.
Subsequently, the Supreme Court unanimously allowed Bishara’s protégé, Balad MK Haneen Zoabi, to run for the Knesset in the 2013 election. The panel headed by president Asher Grunis, alongside future presidents Miriam Naor and Esther Hayut, was aware of Zoabi’s participation in the Mavi Marmara flotilla only three years earlier, during which firearms were used against members of the IDF’s Shayetet 13 naval commando unit who had boarded the vessel.
The pattern continued ahead of the 2015 election, when the Supreme Court again allowed Zoabi to run, despite her continued calls for resistance to Israel and violent Intifada, and ahead of the 2020 election, when it allowed Balad’s Hiba Yazbek to run despite her praise for the terrorist Samir Kuntar.
No trust in the Supreme Court
Such decisions help explain, among other things, why the standing of the Supreme Court among Israel’s Jewish population is at a historic low – at 42% in 2025, according to the Israel Democracy Institute. This reflects a broader trend over recent decades that began long before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trials: trust in the court stood at only 50% in 2008, 57% in 2016, and 41% in 2022.
Many Israelis simply cannot understand the reasoning of the Supreme Court justices, who, time and again, have allowed Hamas and Hezbollah supporters to participate in Israeli democracy.
This time, in the aftermath of the Hamas-led massacres in Israel on October 7, 2023, the Supreme Court justices must not blink.
Whereas in the past it was appropriate to disqualify politicians who expressed support for or identification with those seeking the destruction of the Jewish state, the Supreme Court, under President Isaac Amit, now has an opportunity to demonstrate that it is not disconnected from the public by refraining from intervening in the Central Elections Committee’s decision.
Politicians such as Sami Abu Shehadeh, Ofer Cassif, and others are always welcome to run for the Palestinian or Syrian parliament, where democracy is nothing more than a distant dream.
The writer is a lecturer and research fellow at the University of South Wales in the United Kingdom. He is the author of Collapse: The Israeli Labor Party, 1992-2024.