Balad party leader: Leaving campaign was ‘most difficult decision of my political career’

Sami Abou Shahadeh, head of the Arab nationalist Balad faction, said Friday that dropping out of the October 27 Knesset election was “the most difficult decision of my political career.”

Abou Shahadeh, whose faction was part of the Arab-led Joint List’s slate, stepped down Thursday after the Supreme Court urged him to withdraw, saying there was a majority on the bench to greenlight the Central Elections Committee’s earlier decision to ban the former lawmaker from running.

The CEC vote, which drew support from both sides of the aisle, centered on an article Abou Shahadeh published the day after the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, and which the attorney general argued constituted support for armed struggle against Israel. Abou Shahadeh has expressed regret for writing the article but denied supporting armed struggle against the state.

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Former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main rival, needled Netanyahu’s Likud party, implying that Abou Shahadeh’s continued candidacy would have been a useful foil for the premier. Earlier, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who had personally argued in court for Abou Shahadeh’s disqualification, had gloated that the withdrawal was a victory for his far-right Otzma Yehudit party.

Following Thursday’s Supreme Court hearing, Balad announced Abou Shahadeh’s withdrawal, citing “political responsibility toward our people and the Joint List.”

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In an Arabic-language statement addressed “to our community and people,” Abou Shahadeh said on Facebook that his decision to withdraw followed “injustice and harsh political persecution” against him amid a broader attempt to suppress the Arab vote.

“I made this decision, and it was, without a doubt, the most difficult decision of my political career,” said Abou Shahadeh. He added that the decision did not constitute a retreat from any of his positions but was rather a show of “responsibility for our people, community and the future of our political work.”

The Joint List also said in a statement Friday that “the decision reached by Sami Abou Shahadeh and Balad yesterday wasn’t simple, but was made out of responsibility for our political project.”

The statement added that “going in droves to the polls” was the only riposte to “the fascism, Jewish supremacy and racism, that the ‘opposition’ and Supreme(acy) Court have joined in.” That phrase is an allusion to a video statement put out by Netanyahu on election day in 2015, when he warned that “Arab voters are going to the polls in droves,” a remark that has become infamous among the premier’s critics.

Eisenkot, whose centrist Yashar has led most polls, offered Likud mock condolences over Abou Shahadeh’s withdrawal.

“In the name of the entire Yashar party, I want to give my condolences to the Likud party and Netanyahu on the banning of a true partner in the Mahal-Balad alliance,” Eisenkot said, referring to Likud by the letter-code that represents the party on election ballots.

Appended to Eisenkot’s X post was a video from 2021 in which Abou Shahadeh told the Knesset Channel that the Joint List and the Likud, both in opposition at the time, were coordinating moves against the government that briefly unseated Netanyahu that year.

Ben Gvir, who personally argued the case against Abou Shahadeh before the court, celebrated the Balad chief’s withdrawal but slammed the court for not issuing a ruling on the matter on Thursday night.

In a video statement, Ben Gvir vowed to remove all “haters from Israel” from the Knesset. He has previously used the phrase to refer to all Arab parties.

The next day, Ben Gvir posted a “good morning and holiday greetings” message marking the last day of Sukkot — over a banner that read, “Abou Shahadeh, out of the Knesset because of Minister Ben Gvir.”

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