Haneen Zoabi recently made headlines in Israel when she was disqualified in a 19-9 vote by the Central Elections Committee from running in this January’s elections for the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. She is the current leader of the Balad party, also known in English as the National Democratic Assembly and in Arabic as Tajammua`. Zoabi is also the first Arab-Israeli woman to be elected to the Knesset from an Arab party.
Balad advocates a two-state solution with its capital in East Jerusalem, and does not believe in defining Israel as a Jewish state. It was argued Zoabi should be disqualified for undermining the State of Israel in response to her participation in the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla. This was an attempt by several ships debarking from Cyprus to break the Israeli blockade on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and resulted in the death of nine activists and additional injuries to both the Israel Defense Forces and other activists on one of the ships when IDF forces boarded the vessel after it refused orders to stop. The Central Elections Committee cited this as an example of Zoabi showing, “…support for an enemy state or terrorist organization engaged in armed conflict against Israel.”
Then a week and a half later the Israeli Supreme Court unanimously overturned the ban, ruling Zoabi could participate in the upcoming elections to be held on January 22nd.
Zoabi is one of 11 Members of Knesset (MKs) who represent Arab-Israeli parties, and one of three from her party, out of a total 120 Knesset seats. The two largest political parties in Israel are Kadima and Likud. Kadima is centrist and founded by moderates from Likud, while the latter is the largest right-of-center party. Both parties combined hold 55 seats. According to Balad’s website, it believes “… full citizenship and minority rights will only be realized in a democratic state for all its citizens. Coexistence with the Jewish majority is desirable, but only on the understanding of equal citizenship and equal individual and collective rights.”
MK Yariv Levin of the Likud party said in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling that it had sided with the terrorists on the flotilla boats against Israeli Navy soldiers who were attacked with knives and clubs, and that Zoabi belongs in jail.
This is not the first time the Central Elections Committee has banned Balad. Previously in 2009 the Supreme Court overturned a similar ban on Balad and other Arab-Israeli parties, as it was expected to do in this case.
In a press conference Shoabi stated, “…this decision does not erase the threats, the de-legitimization, and the physical and verbal violence that I experienced at Knesset and outside of it in the past three years.”
Arab-Israeli MKs have been in the Knesset since 1949, but it was not until 1965 that an Arab-Israeli party would attempt to participate in a Knesset election, though the party was subsequently banned before the election took place.
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