Sami Abu Shehadeh, a former Knesset member and chair of the Palestinian nationalist Balad party, was initially disqualified on Sept. 23 by Israel’s Central Elections Committee (CEC) on the basis of an article he published a day after October 7.

In it, he described the Hamas attacks as a historic event that should not have come as a surprise — and argued that if “small, besieged Gaza” could prevent Israeli intelligence from infiltrating its parties and political movements, “then others can do it more effectively and simply.” The Central Elections Committee interpreted his remarks as an endorsement of the attack and support for armed struggle, despite the absence of evidence establishing such support.

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Although the long-term implications of this decision remain uncertain, the immediate outcome is significant. It illustrates an emerging structure of political apartheid inside Israel: Palestinian citizens retain formal electoral rights and parliamentary representation while the boundaries of their political leadership, national identification, and collective political claims are increasingly defined and restricted by state institutions dominated by the Jewish majority.

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The asymmetry becomes particularly striking when considering that requests were also submitted to the CEC to disqualify Ben Gvir and his Otzma[ Yehudit party. One petition, filed on Sept. 14 by the Zulat Institute for Equality and Human Rights together with former senior government officials and legal scholars, sought their exclusion on grounds including incitement to racism. A separate petition was submitted by the Democrats party.

Yet the CEC voted by a wide margin to allow Ben-Gvir and his party to participate in the election — a sign of the racism that sets the limits of political expression and representation within Israel’s electoral and judicial institutions.