A scuffle erupted Thursday, as Israel's supreme court heard a petition against a decision to ban an Arab-Israeli lawmaker from running in the January 22 parliamentary elections.
The High Court of Justice in Jerusalem said it would announce its ruling on the petition by Sunday.
But after the hearing, more than two dozen extreme-right activists activists tried to physically block Hanin Zoabi, from the three-seat Arab Balad party, from leaving, pushing her entourage and yelling insults, including "terrorist, go to Gaza."
Security personnel had to whisk Zoabi, 43 and from the Arab town of Nazareth in northern Israel, away.
Israel's Central Elections Commission (CEC) last week disqualified Zoabi based on a Basic Law which states that anyone who denies Israel's existence as a Jewish state, or supports armed struggle against it, may not be a candidate for the Knesset (parliament). Nineteen CEC members voted for the disqualification, nine against and one abstained.
Ultra-right lawmaker Michael Ben-Ari of the Strong Israel party charged that Zoabi, who participated in a 2010 flotilla that had sought to break Israel's naval blockade of Gaza, were not disqualified today, "tomorrow she'll throw a bomb in the Knesset."
If the panel of nine judges allowed her to run, "I would send them all to Gaza. They can be outstanding judges under (Hamas leader Ismail) Haniya," he told reporters.
"There is no basis whatsoever for the disqualification. There's no basis," a smiling Zoabi earlier told reporters entering the court. "I didn't break any law. The racists should be in court, not I."
The court is expected to reject the disqualification.
Israel's CEC has disqualified parties in the past, including two Arab ones in 2009, but the court has overturned all such decisions, except for the banning of Rabbi Meir Kahane's extremist Jewish Kach party in 1988.
Israel's attorney-general has also said he did not back the CEC decision and recommended against the disqualification at the CEC meeting.
Zoabi took part in the May 2010 flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists headed to Gaza, which ended in the deaths of nine activists when Israeli commandos stormed the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara in international waters.
Israel said the flotilla was a violent provocation and said the activists had attacked the commandos with sticks and knives. Zoabi said she had not been on the deck where the clashes took places and had not witnessed them.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) warned that disqualifying candidates or party lists "on ideological grounds seriously damages" the country's democracy.