Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Attorney Amit Aisman told the Central Elections Committee (CEC) on Tuesday that an article written by Sami Abou Shahadeh, the head of the radical Balad party, a day after the October 7, 2023, massacre, expressed support for armed struggle by terror groups against the State of Israel.

The two senior legal figures said that the Central Elections Committee should therefore “seriously consider” a request by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party to disqualify Abou Shahadeh from running for Knesset, “in accordance with the legal criteria and in light of Abu Shahadeh’s arguments before the committee.”

They added that Abou Shahadeh’s responses to the accusations against him “do not allay concern that his article reflected an expression of support for armed struggle against Israel, at the worst possible timing.”

Basic Law: The Knesset explicitly prohibits anyone expressing support for armed struggle against the State of Israel from running for Knesset.

Any decision by the CEC to disqualify Shahadeh or other individual candidates requires the approval of the Supreme Court, which has historically struck down such decisions. However, the backing of the attorney general and state attorney for disqualification could make the court more likely to uphold a decision barring the Balad leader from running.

In their legal opinion paper, Baharav-Miara and Aisman focused on an article published by Shahadeh on an Arabic-language website on October 8, 2023, about the massive armed invasion of Israel that took place the day prior.

Calling the invasion the “Al-Aqsa Flood operation” (as it had been dubbed by Hamas), Shahadeh wrote that “this is a historic event of significant military, political, and strategic importance.”

He said that the attack was “entirely consistent with a law of physics we all know: that great pressure leads to explosion,” in reference to what he termed “decades of occupation, siege,” and other alleged misdeeds by Israel.

In a key sentence, Abu Shahadeh wrote that Israel’s intelligence services “are human beings like us” and that “it is possible to prevent them from penetrating our countries, our parties, and our political movements — provided there is the will and we organize in the right way.”

“If the small, besieged Gaza managed to do this, and at this level, then others can do so more effectively and easily,” he continued.

The Balad leader also referred to the “diplomatic fruits of this operation,” saying that, following the war, the “resistance” should extend to the PLO and friendly Arab states “in order to attain the desired achievements.”

Baharav-Miara and Aisman wrote that Shahadeh’s article showed “sympathetic treatment,........

© The Times of Israel