This file photo shows lawmakers gathered in the plenum of the Israeli Knesset.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party said on Sept. 13 that it would seek to bar two Arab-majority parties from running in the Oct. 27 Knesset election.
Likud said it plans to file requests to disqualify the Joint List and the United Arab List (Ra’am).
The party accused both of them of supporting “terrorism,” claiming they disparage Israeli soldiers and refuse to designate Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations. The statement did not provide evidence to support the accusations.
The move comes as Likud intensifies its attacks on former army chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, whose Yashar party has emerged as Netanyahu’s main electoral rival.
Likud portrayed the two Arab parties as Eisenkot’s “natural partners” and claimed he would rely on them along with opposition leaders Yair Golan and Avigdor Lieberman to form a government.
The Joint List brings together Arab political parties in Israel, while Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, contests elections separately after breaking away from the alliance.
Ra’am became the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition in 2021.
Recent polls have placed Eisenkot’s Yashar ahead of Likud, while neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor the opposition has secured a clear path to the 61 seats needed to form a government.
That could leave Arab parties with a significant role in post-election coalition arithmetic.
Meanwhile, twenty Israeli occupier families have seized land in the Jordan Valley, eastern occupied West Bank as Israel continues to expand illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory.
The occupiers yesterday moved into the newly established agricultural settlement of Bitron, which was inaugurated ahead of the Jewish New Year on Sept. 12, Israel’s Channel 12 reported.
Bitron is one of 13 settlements that Israel’s Security Cabinet approved separating from neighboring illegal settlements last year as a step toward recognizing them as independent settlements.
Channel 12 described Bitron as the first agricultural settlement established by Israel in around 20 years.
