Israel bans two Arab political parties

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Israel's Central Election Committee voted yesterday to disqualify two Arab political parties from running in the country's general elections scheduled for February 10th. The committee voted 26–3 to disqualify the Arab political party Balad, and 21–3 with eight abstentions to disqualify an alliance of parties United Arab List and Ta'al. The UAL-Ta'al is sometimes also called Ra'am Ta'al.

A "stormy" debate was initiated by petitions from rival parties that accuse UAL-Ta'al and Balad of undermining Israel and supporting violence against it. Arab committee members including Ahmed Tibi, leader of UAL-Ta'al, walked out of the committee before the vote.

Tibi condemned the ruling saying, "It was a political trial led by a group of fascists and racists who are willing to see the Knesset without Arabs and want to see the country without Arabs."

Arabs constitute one fifth of the population in Israel but only have twelve of 120 parliamentary seats. Arabs say that they face daily discrimination. Other parties associated with the Arab-Israeli minority, such as Hadash, are not affected by the committee's decision.

Israel's High Court of Justice reversed a similar attempt to ban Balad in 2003, and has until Friday to rule on yesterday's votes.

Sources

Israel disqualifies Arab parties — BBC News Online, January 12, 2009
Israel poll ban for Arab parties — Al Jazeera, January 12, 2009
Shelly Paz. Elections C'tee bans UAL, Balad lists — The Jerusalem Post, January 12, 2009

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License