JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Israel’s Central Elections Committee voted on Wednesday to disqualify MK Ofer Cassif, a member of the anti-Zionist Chadash party, from running in the upcoming elections for the 26th Knesset, citing his alleged support for an armed struggle against Israel.

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The committee voted 19-5, with two members abstaining, to approve a petition submitted by the Likud party seeking to prevent Cassif from standing for election. The decision and its reasoning will now be submitted to the Supreme Court for approval, as required by Israeli law.

The Likud petition was filed under Section 7A of Basic Law: The Knesset, which allows a candidate or party to be barred from participating in elections if their goals or actions include, among other grounds, denying Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state or supporting an armed struggle by an enemy state or terrorist organization against Israel.

At the conclusion of Wednesday’s proceedings, the committee specifically based its decision on what it described as Cassif’s “support for an armed struggle by an enemy state or a terrorist organization against the State of Israel.”

Cassif, a Jewish member of the predominantly Arab Hadash party, has been a prominent critic of Israeli government policy and has repeatedly faced efforts to prevent him from running for the Knesset.

The decision comes at the beginning of two days of hearings on requests to disqualify candidates and political parties ahead of the October 27 election. Seven disqualification hearings have been scheduled in the current election campaign, two concerning individual candidates and five concerning political lists.

This is not the first time Cassif has faced an attempt to bar him from the Knesset.

Ahead of the 2019 election, the Central Elections Committee voted to disqualify him. However, the Supreme Court overturned the decision, allowing him to run. The Court ruled that the evidence presented at the time did not establish the “critical mass” required to prevent him from standing for election.

The court has historically taken a restrictive approach to Section 7A, emphasizing that disqualification removes a fundamental democratic right, both the right to vote for a candidate and the candidate’s right to be elected. The Israel Democracy Institute notes that the Supreme Court has generally overturned Central Elections Committee disqualifications, particularly where the evidence did not demonstrate an extreme and dominant commitment to one of the statutory grounds.

Central Elections Committee chairman Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg addressed the issue at the opening of the hearings, warning members to exercise particular caution when considering attempts to remove candidates or parties from the ballot.

“The stronger the power, the greater the caution required in exercising it,” Sohlberg said. He stressed that disqualifying a candidate or party prevents an entire segment of the public from voting for them. “Let us not take this lightly,” he said.

Sohlberg also told committee members that they must make their own decisions rather than vote according to their parties’ positions or coalition agreements. “Here, each and every one of you is, in a sense, a judge,” he said. “You are voting — not the faction, and not the agreements between the factions.”

The composition of the committee is itself political: it is headed by a Supreme Court justice but is made up largely of representatives of parties in the outgoing Knesset. Consequently, decisions to disqualify candidates or lists can become highly contentious, with the Supreme Court ultimately having the final say in candidate disqualification cases.

The Cassif decision is expected to move to the Supreme Court as the election campaign enters a particularly contentious stage, with additional requests seeking to bar Arab parties and candidates, as well as other political lists, from participating in the October election.