Knesset member Tamar Zandberg of the left-wing Meretz party was born eight years after the Six-Day War, so like her entire generation she has never experienced the territorial reality that preceded it. Her political identity as a secularist, a feminist, and a member of the social left is the direct outcome of well-formulated and lucid worldview regarding what she calls “the injustice of the occupation.”

The 37-year-old resident of Tel Aviv is part of that group of young people who made their way into the Knesset in the last elections by riding the wave of the social protests. In her particular case, it had to do with the growth of Meretz, which doubled its representation in the Knesset from three seats to six (Zandberg was sixth on the party’s Knesset list), proving that some sectors of the Israeli population still find the idea of a two-state solution appealing.

Although just five months have passed since the elections, it is already obvious that Zandberg is a rising star on the left, which seemed to have aged rather ungracefully over the past few years. She is eloquent, and she pours all her strength into raising the banner of the diplomatic process, but at the same time she has also managed to forge some “strange” alliances with the right and the ultra-Orthodox parties to advance social legislation.

One example of such an ally is Knesset member Moshe Feiglin, a settler and member of the "Jewish leadership," the most extreme faction of the Likud party. She has been working with him to advance legislation concerning medical marijuana (which would authorize any medical specialist to provide a prescription for cannabis to his patients). Obviously, this particular collaboration does not prevent her from declaring that she does not use goods produced in the settlements, and that she tries not to visit the settlements for ideological reasons.