Court cleans the slate for Israeli-Arab lawmaker

The Jerusalem Post ^ | 12 February 2003 | DAN IZENBERG

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Feb. 12, 2003 Court cleans the slate for Israeli-Arab lawmaker By DAN IZENBERG

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The High Court of Justice on Wednesday told MK Azmi Bishara that it would issue a ruling making it clear that a previous Supreme Court decision that was sharply critical of him could not be used against him.

The ruling by a panel of three justices including Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, Ayala Procaccia and Dalia Dorner came in response to a petition by the Israeli-Arab human rights organization Adalah on Bishara's behalf, asking the court to repeal the previous decision altogether.

But Barak told Adalah attorney Hassan Jabarin that the High Court could not overrule Supreme Court decisions.

The incident occurred during the elections to the last Knesset in 1999. A private citizen, Avner Ehrlich, petitioned the Central Elections Committee to bar Bishara and his Balad Party from running for the Knesset on the grounds that Bishara wanted to destroy the Jewish State.

The committee rejected the petition by a vote of 21 to four. Ehrlich then appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court. He did not name Bishara as a respondent, and Bishara was not invited to the hearings or even informed of the court's decision, even though the appeal directly affected him.

The court acknowledged that Ehrlich was not entitled to appeal the decision. According to the law, only a minimum of one-quarter of committee members or the Attorney General is empowered to do so.

Nonetheless, the a panel of three justices including Jacob Turkel, Ya'acov Kedmi and Tova Strasberg-Cohen heard the appeal and handed down a decision on its merits. The court rejected the appeal with a "heavy heart," wrote Turkel.

Basing his decision on an interview with Bishara published in Ha'aretz, Turkel wrote that Bishara's statements indicated that "he rejects the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jews."

He also wrote that the statements attributed to Bishara"come dangerously close to the red line which must not be crossed." According to Jabarin, Bishara had written a letter to Ha'aretz to explain some of the comments he had made in the interview. But the court did not mention Bishara's explanations nor summon him to the court to explain his words.

Jabarin added that Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein, who tried to persuade the elections committee to disqualify Bishara from running in the recent election, frequently referred to the judges' declaration that Bishara was close to the red line in order to strengthen his case against the Israeli Arab MK.