A court nudges Balad’s leader off the ballot as polls swing back to Netanyahu

The Central Elections Committee voted on 23 September to disqualify the Balad chairman; under Israeli law the Supreme Court must approve any individual candidate’s removal, and Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara filed a position on Tuesday 29 September asking the court to do so. An expanded panel of nine justices convened on 1 October to hear that case alongside the committee’s moves against Hadash MK Ofer Cassif and against Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am as a list. Itamar Ben Gvir, who sought the disqualification, argued it in the courtroom himself with his ally MK Gotliv. The justices told Abou Shahadeh a majority would uphold the ban and urged him to withdraw; he ended his candidacy. Balad says he remains party leader and that the Joint List will keep working to unseat Netanyahu. Ben Gvir celebrated the result while complaining the court had given him a window to quit. The rulings on Cassif and on Ra’am were not reported as of Thursday evening.

The seat tables moved the same day. Haaretz reported a new poll putting Netanyahu’s bloc on 54 and his opponents on 52, with the opposition’s refusal to work with Arab parties supplying the edge. A television poll carried by the Times of Israel — the broadcaster is not identified in the published entry — showed the Netanyahu bloc regaining the lead while still far short of 61, with Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar first on 21 seats, down one, and Likud on 19. A separate Times of Israel survey the same day had the bloc leading and Likud tied for first. For comparison, a Kan poll in early September had the camps at 52 and 51. Haaretz’s own recent headline run has read “tied,” then “Eisenkot’s bloc beats Netanyahu,” then “Eisenkot bloc leads by one.”

Assessment: Three lead changes in a fortnight is not movement, it is noise inside the margin of error; the only stable finding is that neither camp reaches 61 without the twelve-odd seats both sides have agreed to treat as untouchable. That is what makes the disqualification docket arithmetic rather than symbolism. Each Arab-list seat removed or suppressed shifts the effective majority threshold downward for the bloc that does not need those votes. Watch the pending dispositions on Cassif and Ra’am before concluding anything: a court that pushed one candidate to withdraw rather than issue a ruling has avoided writing the precedent down. Treat the Middle East Forum tracker, an American advocacy outfit, as a convenience rather than an authority.