Sami Abu Shehadeh won Balad’s primary election 230-159 on Saturday, and will lead the party in the upcoming general election. A source in the party told The Jerusalem Post that it is still unclear whether Balad will run as part of the Joint List or separately.
“Our main condition is that our guiding principles will be exactly the same as they were in the past election,” the source said.
Balad is considered to be the most hawkish among the Arab parties and sees itself as part of the Palestinian national movement.
It describes itself as a pro-democratic party that wishes to dismantle the current Israeli regime and create a new political system. It also rejects the idea of a Jewish state.
The two candidates for the chairmanship of the party were Mtanes Shihadeh, who led the party in the past three rounds of elections, and Abu Shehadeh. According to party rules, the candidate who lost the chairmanship race cannot be included in the party’s list in the coming election.
Shehadeh said his party’s main goal in the upcoming election is to combat the efforts of Zionist parties to attract Arab voters, and to reinstate the “discourse regarding the political rights of the Palestinian people in Israel.”
In the second election in 2019 that took place in September, Balad was the only party of the four in the Joint List that did not recommend giving Benny Gantz the mandate to form a government. By doing so, it continued the traditional stance of the Arab parties not to recommend any candidate to the president.
In the election of 2020 however, Balad aligned with the Joint List to recommend Gantz.
Shehadeh explained then that Balad’s fundamental stance is not to recommend any candidate, “but with the understanding of the current political situation, and in order to topple the regime of the biggest among those who incite against the Arab society and its leaders, we decided to keep the Joint List united and to accept the decision of the majority in the list.”
Abou Shahadeh told the Post that Balad showing a consistent rejection of cooperation with Zionist parties will increase its power in the 2021 election.
“We were the first to say that we cannot trust Gantz,” he said. “We told our partners that the way they read the political map is a mistake, and now everyone is being smart – but retroactively.”
One of the main issues that will play a major role in the upcoming election within Arab society is violence and illegal weapons in Arab towns.
In 2020, some 96 Arabs were killed in domestic crime.
On Friday, protests against violence in Arab towns and in favor of police interference in these cases were held in Tamra and in Umm el-Fahm, where 21-year-old Mohammad Ighbaria was killed on the same day.
Umm al-Fahm Mayor Samir Mahamid said he intends to resign if a comprehensive governmental plan against violence in Arab towns is not approved by the end of next month.
In a conversation with the Post, he explained the move by saying he feels “helpless.”
“I was there in the protest, and I met the sisters and cousins of the young man that was murdered. They slammed me for doing nothing, and I had no answers to them,” he said.
“Whoever has the tools to fight these violent acts is not using them,” he said. “The government needs to set a new policy: an operative plan.”