Arab Knesset member: we cannot fight from the inside
JVL Introduction
We commend this Ha’aretz interview with Aida Touma-Sliman, the only female Hadash member of the Knesset, where she explains why she will not be standing again at the next election. A feminist and fighter for justice for Palestinians she has given a decade of her life to trying to change things from within the system and now concludes the Knesset is just another aspect of Israeli society that must be fought. There is no room for partnership any longer – and she has tried but, especially since the war on Gaza, it is impossible.
There is also much here that provides a glimpse into the reality of life for the Palestinians who are full citizens of Israel and trying to address their needs inside a Knesset dominated by politicians who, overtly or otherwise, believe in Jewish supremacy.
LL
This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Sat 8 Nov 2025. Read the original here.
The Knesset Symbolizes Everything I've Fought Against. I Don't Want to Be There. I Want to Fight It'
After a decade in the Knesset, Arab Israeli lawmaker Aida Touma-Sliman says she can no longer serve in a place that ’embodies oppression, silencing and Jewish supremacy’ – and she doesn’t hide her anger toward Israel’s so-called liberal camp
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All very commendable, but any participation within the Knesset, and any belief that it can be challenged “from within” is an acceptance of the status quo and of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity. The Knesset is part of the Zionist myth of “democracy”, a symbol of apartheid, where the “Jewish” fanatical supremacists enact their fascistic neo-Aryan laws. Justice for the Palestinians in their own land, won’t come from within the Zionist apparatus, but without that apparatus, free of its oppression, murder and guns. A one-state solution is the only solution, without colonialism or its shackles. Including the Knesset.
… Palestinian citizens of Israel… have to struggle to maintain their own integrity every hour of the day, while trying to live the only life that they have. None of us here, thousands of miles away, have the right to condescend to Palestinians who choose to vote or to Palestinians (or Jews) who take up seats in the Knesset in order to stand up for the rights of twenty per cent of the population.
In this interview, Aida Touma-Slima shows herself to be a complex, nuanced and sophisticated thinker, campaigner and activist, who has fought the good fight all her life. She was never sure it was the right thing to do, but she gave it as tough and principled a go as she could in the Knesset, and now she has concluded that go was doomed. During her Knesset years, she was little acknowledged by political activists or commentators who consistently focus on men, but her life has been extraordinary – brave, unsectarian, thoughtful, built on a foundation of a kind and radical family background, and characterised by unwavering feminism and profound Palestinianism. She tried a particular political strategy for ten years and has earned the right to say – my/our campaigning now has to be different, and it will be.
She reminds me a bit of Dov Kheinin, the Jewish Hadash MK (before Ofer Kassif), who retired from the Knesset for rather similar reasons. Like Aida, he took seriously using the ’system’ – and was, like her, very successful in some ways, creating new laws which made the daily lives of many citizens better. And, of course, he wasn’t treated as contemptuously as Aida, being neither a woman nor a Palestinian.
Both were would-be bridge-builders who never forgot what the bridges they were trying to build were for. I look forward to watching what Aida does next – it will really matter.
Neil G’s comment that ‘any belief that it can be challenged “from within” is an acceptance of the status quo and of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity’ is truly insulting to Palestinian citizens of Israel who have to struggle to maintain their own integrity, while trying to live the only life that they have. Indeed, it removes even more agency from these Palestinians than does the Israeli state itself.
What are Palestinian citizens of Israel supposed to do? Their entire lives are about working out how to retain their own identity and decision-making within a state that treats them as second-class citizens and whose very existence is a negation of theirs. But while Israel exists, its Palestinians must live. They have to work their way through the education system, find jobs, etc – which involves getting on Israeli buses, pass Israeli driving tests, buy Israeli food, find homes within Israel, go for job interviews – or wait on corners for daily hire. Are they supposed to boycott life, education, work, eating, living in houses, travelling ?
And, of course, they are subject to Israeli laws which sometimes are to their benefit. There is a brilliant Palestinian charity, Lawyers for Good Governance, established and run by lawyer Palestinian citizens of Israel, whose aim is to force Palestinian-run towns to represent their residents, not be havens of corrupt nepotism as many of them have been since the state’s foundation. If this charity didn’t exist and win all the cases it takes, and educate local councillors, local government officers, school children, teachers etc as to their rights under local government law, Israel’s Palestinian citizens would be hugely worse off than they already are. Which, no doubt, would be very pure – but to what point?
Or take the Palestinian citizen of Israel, woman film director Maysaloun Hamoud, who insisted on securing Israeli state funding to enable her to make her extraordinary film ‘In Between’ – about three Palestinian women flatmates living in Tel Aviv. As she said – she pays her taxes, she qualifies for state funding, should she have abandoned her film? Or, instead of being a film-maker, spent years shopping around for non-state funding untainted by any connection with Israel?
But actually I wanted to say how important I thought this article was. Its subject, Aida, is amazing – from her family background, to her feminism to her Palestinianism. She tried a particular political strategy for ten years and has earned the right to say – my/our campaigning has to be different, and it will be.
(longer than usually permitted comment Ed)
Just a brief reply. With all respect to Naomi Wayne: what concerns most of us supporting the Palestinians fight for liberation and sovereignty, the Knesset and “Israel” offering crumbs for documentaries and the struggle of living in Tel Aviv, pales into insignificance when:
Bedouins this week have had their homes demolished, and their belongings burned by settlers, supported by IOF soldiers, in the West Bank. [Quds News Network]
Today [Saturday] the IOF have conducted raids across the West Bank, terrorising families, detaining indiscriminately men and women [Al Mayadeen].
Teenage Palestinian children have been shot and killed over the last seven days in Gaza as well as the West Bank.
In addition, the amount of “aid” being allowed into Gaza is “a drop in the ocean” and Palestinians face a winter in tents, no sanitation, freezing cold and at high risk of serious diseases and death from continued “Israeli” tank fire and snipers bullets.
For the overwhelming majority of Palestinians, [which includes those whom I know from my time in the West Bank, in Hebron and Bethlehem] what matters to them is daily survival. A glass of fresh water. Female hygiene products, access to food and sanitation.
There is no intention to insult or condescension of Palestinians [from afar], but an attempt to get a sense of perspective. Those who have the privilege of living [and surviving] in Tel Aviv, are amongst a minority in occupied Palestine. What they are allowed to do is with permission of the Zionist regime. Those in Hebron, Gaza, Jenin, Nablus, Khan Younis, East Jerusalem and all other areas of the occupied territories, don’t have any privileges. For them, the Knesset is the vipers nest of the “Israeli” enemy. When Palestinian Civil Defence dig up mass graves of those executed by the IOF, and Palestinian bodies are “returned” without heads and having organs “harvested”, Tel Aviv may as well be on Mars.
With all due respect. Perspective is everything.