The Central Election Committee will announce on Wednesday whether the Arab-Israeli Ra'am-Ta'al and National Democratic Assembly parties and the ultra-nationalist Strong Israel party will be allowed to run in the coming Knesset elections or whether they will be disqualified. The parties and MKs in line to be disqualified have hired a battery of attorneys to represent them in a marathon discussion run by the Election Committee chairman, Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, to convince the 34 members of the committee to reject petitions to disqualify them. It's unfortunate that they are investing so much energy, since the outcomes of the vote are already predetermined. The committee is made up of politicians, representing all the parties to be represented in Knesset. Each member comes to the vote with preconceived notions on how they will vote. As one who has accompanied such discussions in past election cycles, I know that the representatives of Yisrael Beytenu, Shas, United Torah Judaism, National Union and the New National Religious Party, who make up the majority of the committee, will support the petition to block the National Democratic Assembly and MK Hanin Zoabi from running and will also perhaps vote against Ra'am-Ta'al. In contrast, they will oppose with all their might the petition to block the Strong Israel party. On the eve of the 2003 elections, the Election Committee gathered to discuss disqualification petitions. The petition to disqualify Balad and its leader at the time, Azmi Bishara, was passed by a large majority. The head of the committee at the time, Supreme Court Justice Mishael Cheshin, said before the vote, "If all the other functions of the Election Committee were placed on one side of a balance and the role to disqualify candidates on the other side, the latter would be the heavier weight. This is the most sensitive role imposed on the committee." Cheshin also urged the committee to read the arguments filed by the potential disqualified candidates' attorneys, saying, "I do not mean that we have to read as carefully as if we were reading the first chapter of Isaiah, but we need to read the arguments thoroughly." Cheshin, who opposed the disqualification of Balad, also said there were "those who were convinced already before they arrived." The same thing happened on the eve of the elections for the 17th Knesset in 2006 and the 18th Knesset in 2009. Yet again, parties on the Right petitioned to disqualify the Arab-Israeli parties and, yet again, the majority of the right-wing parties on the committee automatically approved the rejection. In actuality, in all of these cases, the Supreme Court discussed appeals against the disqualifications and canceled them, allowing the Arab-Israeli parties to run in the elections. However, there is a serious issue with politicians, some of them on the second or third tier of the political echelon, who use the authority conferred upon them by law and try to disqualify their opponents, mainly due to their own political considerations, rather than based on practical issues. How many times in the past has it been suggested that the Election Committee be denied the authority to disqualify lists or candidates to the Knesset, instead allowing only the chairman of the committee, a Supreme Court justice, to make such decisions. But the suggestion, as expected, raised strong objection among representatives of the major political parties in the Knesset. The current legal situation is inappropriate. Only a judge whose integrity, honesty and professionalism are unquestionable, not a politician, can weigh all of the considerations completely objectively in the case of candidates' efficacy to run in elections.
