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Balad Party (Israel)

BALAD Al-Tajmu'a Al-Watani Al-Demokrati

Last modified: 2024-01-13 by martin karner
Keywords: balad | al-tajmua al-watani al-demokrati |
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image by Mikhail Revnivtsev |



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Description

Full name in 2003 elections: BALAD – Brit Leumit Demokretit (Democratic National Joint).
Letter: Dalet.
Flag/logo: logo – Arabic name in orange on white
Remarks: Led by K.M. Azmy Bshara whose candidancy disqualified by the central elections committee but was approved by the Supreme court.
Dov Gutterman, 17 and 28 January 2003

The image is based on photo from www.arabs48.com. It is the new flag of BALAD Party in the State of Israel.
Mikhail Revnivtsev, 23 October 2005

BALAD – Brit Le'unit Democratit (National Democratic Alliance – also to match the Arabic word for country/land) and in Arabic (as the inscription on the flag state) Al-Tajmua Al-Watani Al-Demokrati, is a Arabic-Israeli political party which was established in 1996 and have 3 Knesset members. The party manifest is based of the idea of Israel as the state of all its citizens, Jews and Arabs and fight for equal rights for the Arab citizens while preserving their Palestinian heritage and links.
Sources: www.ynet.co.il, www.knesset.gov.il.
Dov Gutterman, 23 October 2005

BALAD is supposed to be the initials of the transliteration of the Arabic list name into Hebrew (Brit Leumt Democratit – National Democratic Alliance), however, this transliteration is almost never used by this list and the list name is really used because of its meaning in Arabic (= land).
The official name of the list and the party is only in Arabic: "al-Tajmua al-Watani al-Democrai – BALAD". The list used the letters Dalet (Hebrew) and Dal (Arabic) on the same ballot card.
This Arabic-Israeli party was founded in 1995. It is led by Azmi Beshara and its main goal is "making Israel the state of all its citizens" and "getting full civilrights for Israel Arabs"
The party uses its logo which incorporates the party name with the Arabic word al-Tajmua more prominent then others. The Flag is the logo in black on orange background [see: variant]. As car-flag, the inscription is shifted downwards and above it there is the ballot card with the letters "dalet" and "dal".
It had 3 seats in the 16th Knesset and kept its strength in the 17th. Website at www.balad.org.
Dov Gutterman, 26 March and 7 June 2006

The flag above is shown also at a photo here and also here.
Eugene Ipavec, 7 July 2007


Variants

image by Željko Heimer, 26 March 2006

image located by William Garrison

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Original caption: Balad supporters wave the Palestinian and the party flag at campaign launch in Baqa al-Gharbiya on September 24, 2022. (Courtesy).

This Balad flag appears to be a variety of the Balad Party flag in that this flag appears to have some additional slogans in the main logo. The below photo reveals a backside or "negative" image, with the Arabic word being "backwards". To read it properly, the photo needs to be "reversed" to a "positive" view.
William Garrison, 27 September 2022

image located by William Garrison

A variant of the "Balad" flag highlighting its Arabic-word "daad" election-ballot logo: ض . On Israeli ballots, each party is marked not only by its name but also by a code of up to three letters, sometimes consisting of its acronym, sometimes standing for a historical name or element in their platform, and sometimes more randomly picked. This is done to help with the voting process, where each voter needs to pick one ballot out of a few dozens available. Similarly, "Balad" picked the letter ד, dalet in Hebrew and the letter ض, daad in Arabic (the ballots in Arabic-speaking localities are typically bi-lingual). I believe the reason for this is because this phoneme exists only in Arabic (it’s even often nicknamed Lughat a-daad or “Language of the daad” because of this reason), which stresses the Arab-Muslim nationalist nature of the party. In Hebrew the regular Dalet is used, either because it’s the letter closest in pronunciation to Ḍaad or because it stands for “democratic” in the party’s name. "Daad-Balad" flag on car antenna in Lod, Israel c. Oct. 2022.
William Garrison, 17 November 2022