MK Aida Touma-Sliman stepped onto the balcony of the historic YMCA hotel in Jerusalem, lighting a cigarette. “I don’t smoke during the day, only at night, once it gets dark,” she said, exhaling into the cool evening air late last month.

The number two lawmaker in the majority-Arab, far-left, anti-Zionist party Hadash, Touma-Sliman had just wrapped up a press conference with a panel of Israeli and Palestinian speakers to discuss the recognition of a Palestinian state by several Western countries.

Speakers, including Mossi Raz, a former MK from the defunct left-wing Meretz party, and actor and screenwriter Menashe Noy, called for an end to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza sparked by the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, onslaught, criticized ongoing settlement policies in the West Bank, and pressed for a political solution guaranteeing Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

Once considered a mainstream position, the two-state solution is now viewed with skepticism by many in Israel who doubt the prospects of a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians that keeps Israel secure in the wake of October 7.

As Western countries moved to recognize Palestinian statehood last month, seeking to pressure Jerusalem over the war in Gaza, many in Israel criticized the initiatives for appearing to come as a reward for the worst terror attack ever against Israelis, failing to take into account the country’s security concerns and liable to fuel worsening anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment globally.

While Touma-Sliman and others talked up statehood at the YMCA, a few blocks away President Isaac Herzog, a former leader of the dovish Labor party and longtime advocate of the two-state solution, criticized recognition moves by Canada, the UK and Australia as “only embolden[ing] the forces of darkness.”

Touma-Sliman, an outspoken supporter of Palestinian statehood, was also critical of the recognition moves, but only because they were “too little, too late,” she told The Times of Israel after the September 21 event.

While she hailed the US-brokered ceasefire agreement that came into effect last week as a “necessary and profoundly important step,” the lawmaker told the Times of Israel that the ceasefire and release of hostages alone were insufficient, unless followed by a “commitment to rebuild Gaza and by full recognition of the Palestinian people’s right to independence.”

“Only an end to the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel will open the door to a true and just peace,” she said in a statement Wednesday.

For Touma-Sliman, being out of lockstep with the Jewish Israeli mainstream is nothing new.

A noted feminist, former journalist and outspoken anti-Zionist, Touma-Sliman is considered to be among the more extreme and incendiary voices in the Knesset.

She has made several inflammatory statements in the past, including altering her Knesset swearing-in statement to include a vow to “fight against the occupation.” In 2023, she was

© The Times of Israel