📜 ELECTION LAW: With elections estimated to be about 34 days away, opposition coordination is continuing. Eisenkot and Lieberman agreed to coordinate election strategy with the bloc’s other parties, describing replacing the government of the October 7 massacre as their overriding commitment. Lapid announced a Saturday-night meeting with Bennett, Eisenkot, Lieberman and Golan. Eisenkot said party leaders already maintain regular contact and their representatives meet weekly.
Ben-Gvir said he would demand the Defense Ministry and the Justice Ministry for Tally Gotliv, while proposing a strategic plan to encourage voluntary migration from Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Segel said Gotliv could not become a minister because she had retained her immunity. Eisenkot pledged to prevent a “government of draft-dodging and disasters on steroids”; Gantz warned that a scenario he had raised in January could become reality and said children’s security must not be entrusted to extremists.
⚖️ Candidate disqualifications: committee ruling and competing legal positions: The Central Elections Committee voted by a majority to bar Ofer Cassif from running, according to Segel, who said the decisive test would come at the High Court of Justice. Sami Abu Shehadeh’s disqualification remained pending in the latest report after he joined his hearing by Zoom.
The Attorney General and State Attorney had found no legal basis to disqualify Cassif, Religious Zionism, Zehut, the Democrats, Ra’am, Otzma Yehudit, the Joint List or Balad. They distinguished Abu Shehadeh, saying his October 8, 2023 article appeared prima facie to support a terrorist organization’s armed struggle against Israel and that his written response had not sufficiently dispelled that interpretation. They urged serious consideration of disqualification under the applicable standards and in light of his arguments. Journalist Avishai Grinzaig said that, to his knowledge, an Attorney General had never previously withheld a clear position on a candidate’s disqualification; he and Segel criticized the formulation.
Segel also challenged Abu Shehadeh’s claim that he had not understood the massacre’s scale on October 8. Citing an October 9 interview submitted by Abu Shehadeh himself, Segel criticized his response to the massacre’s obstruction of Saudi normalization that would have included Palestinian concessions. Abu Shehadeh called the massacre “a law of physics—pressure leads to an explosion” and said those recognizing Palestinians as human beings should be amazed by their patience amid humiliation. Segel argued that this portrayed Palestinians as having waited patiently before the massacre.
Support for disqualification spans several parties, with different scopes. Gantz backed barring Abu Shehadeh, Balad and Cassif; Eisenkot backed barring Abu Shehadeh but has no committee representation. Yisrael Beiteinu backed excluding the Joint List, Ra’am, Cassif and Abu Shehadeh, arguing that eliminating Hamas must be a central objective of any Zionist government and that parties opposing it have no place in the Knesset. Segel described Lieberman’s position as a break with the bloc, specifically citing support for disqualifying Abbas and Segalovich.
Bennett’s party and the Democrats also supported barring Abu Shehadeh. Explaining support for Ben-Gvir’s petition, Golan said legitimizing armed struggle or attacks on Jewish or Arab civilians crossed a red line. He also called for Ben-Gvir’s disqualification, rejecting terrorism, Kahanism and extreme Jewish nationalism while supporting Jewish-Arab partnership and opposing blanket disqualification.
Abu Shehadeh’s hospitalization had raised the possibility of a one-day delay before Justice Sohlberg approved remote participation. Otzma Yehudit accused him of seeking to delay proceedings as the judge’s final hearing days approached and said it would seek questioning even in hospital if necessary.
🔁 Know someone who would appreciate these updates? Please pass this along.
🗨️ Join the discussion, read on web & subscribe by email: https://www.israelrealtime.com/p/subscribe