The High Court of Justice on Sunday rejected The Democrats’ petition to remove Otzma Yehudit from the October 27 election.
The Election Law did not give the party the right to appeal the Central Elections Committee’s decision, the court ruled, adding that the circumstances did not justify making an exception.
The judges also rejected The Democrats’ appeal to disqualify National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and MK Tally Gotliv individually. They ruled that it had not been signed by the required one-third of the committee’s members.
The ruling leaves the party and both candidates in the race. It does not, however, decide whether The Democrats’ allegations that Otzma Yehudit undermines Israel’s democratic character and incites racism are correct.
The court dismissed the case on procedural grounds without examining those claims on their merits.
Justice Ofer Grosskopf wrote the decision, which was joined by Justices Dafna Barak-Erez and Khaled Kabub.
The dispute began with two separate decisions by the Central Elections Committee last month.
Democrats argue Otzma Yehudit incited racism and negated Israel as a democratic state
On September 24, the committee voted 19-10, with one abstention, to reject requests by The Democrats and the Zulat Institute, an Israeli left-wing research institute, to disqualify the entire Otzma Yehudit slate. The party’s actions negated Israel’s existence as a democratic state and amounted to incitement to racism, they said.
Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara opposed disqualifying the slate. Her position described the evidence as deeply troubling and said it brought Otzma Yehudit very close to the prohibited line. Nevertheless, she concluded that it did not meet the exceptionally high evidentiary threshold required to remove an entire party from an election.
The Democrats had also sought to disqualify Ben-Gvir and Gotliv individually. Justice Noam Sohlberg, chairman of the Central Elections Committee, dismissed that request on September 14 because it was not supported by the signatures of at least one-third of the committee’s members, as required by law.
Election Law allows only the attorney-general, the Central Elections Committee chairman, or at least one-third of the committee’s members to appeal a decision allowing a party to run, and The Democrats did not fall into any of those categories.
A request to disqualify an individual candidate must similarly carry the signatures of one-third of the committee before it can be considered. Because the Democrats did not obtain those signatures, the requests concerning Ben-Gvir and Gotliv were never properly placed before the full committee.
The Democrats acknowledged those obstacles but argued that the High Court retains broad constitutional authority to intervene in exceptional circumstances. They said the evidence against Otzma Yehudit and its leading candidates was so extreme that the judges should hear the case despite the procedural failures.
The judges said they still had the power to intervene, but The Democrats needed to show a compelling reason to depart from the appeal process set by law. They had not done so, particularly given the compressed election timetable.
The judges said much of the petition had focused on Ben-Gvir and Gotliv and relied partly on the attorney-general’s position concerning Otzma Yehudit. Yet The Democrats had not approached the attorney-general and asked her to exercise her own authority to appeal the committee’s approval of the slate.
Petition against Ben-Gvir and Gotliv was filed too late
The court also found that the challenge concerning Ben-Gvir and Gotliv had been filed too late. The petition was submitted on Tuesday, more than two weeks after Sohlberg rejected the individual disqualification requests.
Candidate and party approvals must be completed quickly enough for the election to proceed on schedule, Grosskopf said.
The Democrats said senior Otzma Yehudit figures had acted against the rule of law, judicial independence, separation of powers, and equal protection of citizens. Their petition cited Ben-Gvir’s alleged interference in police operations and appointments, Gotliv’s statements concerning compliance with court rulings, and the conduct of other candidates whom the party accused of promoting racist views.
The petition also cited expressions of support by party candidates for Amiram Ben Uliel, who was convicted of murdering three members of the Dawabshe family in the 2015 Duma arson attack and allegedly identified with the ideology of the outlawed Kach movement.
Otzma Yehudit opposed the original disqualification requests and argued that they should be rejected on their merits.
Baharav-Miara, while sharply criticizing aspects of Ben-Gvir’s conduct as national security minister, said misconduct that could justify judicial intervention in his ministerial role did not necessarily satisfy the substantially higher test for barring an entire party from an election.