The intention of members of the Labor party to support the petitions to bar the candidacy of Knesset member Heba Yazbak (Balad faction of the Arab Joint List) for the election to the 23rd Knesset attest more than anything to their wish to remain distinct from Meretz, their partner in the united list of the Israeli left, whose members tend to oppose barring her from running.

Balad, the national Arab party, is considered the most extreme of the four Arab parties making up the Joint List. After the election in September 2019, when the Joint List announced that it would recommend to the president to charge Blue and White leader Benny Gantz with forming the government, the three representatives from Balad in the Joint List refused to endorse the recommendation.

The three petitions demanding to bar Yazbak are based mostly on the claim that she supports “evil terrorists” and has written in their praise. For instance, in 2015, she called the Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar a "shahid" (martyr) and expressed anger at his assassination. Kuntar murdered Danny Haran and his 4-year-old daughter Einat in a brutal attack in Nahariya in 1979, and was released to Lebanon in 2008 in the framework of the deal to return the bodies of Israel Defense Forces soldiers Eldad Regev and Udi Goldwasser. After his release he returned to terrorist activity with Hezbollah and in 2015 he was killed in Syria. In another post, Yazbak expressed support for Palestinian terrorist Dalal al-Mughrabi, who participated in murdering 35 Israeli citizens in 1978 and was killed during the attack.

In August 2019, in a debate at the Supreme Court regarding the Balad party over a petition to disqualify the list, the judges sharply denounced Yazbak. It seems that if a specific request to disqualify her had been submitted to the Central Elections Committee, the Supreme Court would not have prevented it. “Samir Kuntar crushed the skull of a baby. Identifying with him is a shame and a disgrace,” said Justice Yitzhak Amit. And Supreme Court President Esther Hayut determined that Yazbak’s remarks were “support for a terrorist organization” — one of the reasons to disqualify a candidate.