Tag

Knesset

Browsing
Former MK Sami Abu Shehadeh casting his ballot at a polling station during the 2022 Israeli general election, Jaffa, November 1, 2022. (Photo: Saeed Qaq/APA Images)

Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are no longer asked to pledge allegiance, but to renounce their own history. Palestinian Knesset candidate Sami Abu Shehadeh did exactly that before Israel’s Supreme Court, and was pushed out anyway.

The fate of Israel’s embattled Arab parties is in the balance as Israel’s next parliamentary elections approach. The election season officially started this week when Knesset formally dissolved itself setting an unconfirmed date at the polls of March 17, 2015. Yet as campaigns take off the question of Israel’s smaller parties and the survival of Arab political groups in particular run in the background. Next year’s early elections will be the first after Israel raised the voter threshold to require 3.25-percent of the popular vote in order for a party to secure a seat in Knesset. None of the Arab parties have reached this threshold on their own and will either have to merge, or forgo being a part of the government.