Communist Party of Palestine

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The Communist Party of Palestine ( Arabic الحزب الشيوعي الفلسطيني, DMG al-Ḥizb aš-šuyūʿī al-filasṭīnī , Yiddish פּאלעסטינישע קאָמוניסטישע פּארטײ, Palestiniše Komunistiše Partej , PKP for short) was a political party in Palestine , which was founded in 1923 as an amalgamation of the Palestinian Communist Party (1922) and the Communist Party of Palestine . In 1924 the party was recognized as the Palestinian section of the Communist International (Comintern).

The Palestinian Communist Party emerged from a left-wing split from the socialist-Zionist Poale Zion . In the course of the October Revolution , some of its members sought to join the Communist International and increasingly distanced themselves from the Zionist settlement plans and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine in favor of world revolutionary hopes. In 1923 the Communist Party Congress of Palestine passed a resolution supporting the Arab national movement in the fight against British imperialism and condemned Zionism as a movement of the Jewish bourgeoisie allied with British imperialism. The party was thus admitted to the Comintern . The party was also against the Zionist colonization of Palestine and against the Histadrut and their policies of Jewish labor.

The party began to recruit Arab members in the mid-1920s. According to British intelligence sources, an Arab joined the party for the first time in 1924. In 1925 the party had eight Arab members. That year the party had contact with the Arab-Palestinian Labor Organization while also establishing connections with the local elite of Arab society. After Halliday, the party attracted many Christian Arabs because, as Orthodox Christians, they had an emotional connection with Russia . However, when the Comintern made an ultra-left swing in 1928 and refused to cooperate with national bourgeoisies in the colonies, the process of strengthening the party among the Arab population came to a standstill. After another U-turn in 1930, the Comintern called on its section in Palestine to rapidly increase the number of Arabs in its cadres and leadership.

Under the rule of Josef Stalin , party activists in the Soviet Union suffered radical purges, including numerous people close to the party leader Leopold Trepper . Daniel Averbach , a founding member of the party, was beaten so brutally that he lost his mind. Joseph Berger , an activist from the very beginning, spent decades of his life in the GuLag and was not rehabilitated until 1956.

In 1943 the party split: in 1944 the Arab members founded the National Liberation League . Initially, both the PKP and the Liberation League opposed the 1947 UN Partition Plan , but when the Soviet Union approved it, they too supported it.

With the support of the partition plan in October 1947, the PKP also changed its name to "Communist Party of Eretz Israel" ( Makej ). This was the first time that communists used the term “ Eretz Israel ” (“Land of Israel”). However, it had been a widespread practice in Palestine under the British Mandate to render “Palestine” as “Eretz Israel” when translated into Hebrew. The party still saw the division as a temporary departure from the path to a binational state. The two parties remained in contact during the 1948 war, and after the war the National Liberation League merged within the borders of the new state to form the Israel Communist Party (Maki).

From 1951 the Jordanian Communist Party organized the Palestinians in the West Bank , while a new Palestinian Communist Organization mobilized members in Gaza . In 1975 a Palestinian Communist Organization was also formed in the West Bank as a section of the Jordanian Party , which in 1982 dissolved its ties to Jordan and merged with the organization in Gaza to form the new Communist Party of Palestine . This later became the Palestinian People's Party, which in 1987 joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

literature

  • Mario Keßler : The Comintern and the Poale Zion 1919 to 1922 - A failed synthesis of communism and Zionism , in: Work - Movement - History , Issue II / 2017, pp. 15-30.
  • Mario Keßler: Communist activist in Palestine and ofper of Stalinism: Joseph Berger (1904-1978) , in: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Issue I / 2015.
  • Johan Franzén: Communism versus Zionism: The Comintern, Yishuvism, and the Palestine Communist Party. In: Journal for Palestine Studies , Vol. 36, No. 2 (Winter 2007).
  • Joel Beinen: The Palestine Communist Party 1919–1949. In: MERIP Reports , No. 55 (March 1977), pp. 3-17.
  • Mario Offenberg: Communism in Palestine. Nation and class in the anti-colonial revolution (Marburg treatises on political science, vol. 29). Meisenheim / Glan: Hain, 1975; ISBN 3-445-01273-3 .

Other sources

  • Bernstein, Deborah S. (2000). Constructing Boundaries: Jewish and Arab Workers in Mandatory Palestine . SUNY Press. ISBN 0-7914-4539-9 .
  • Beinin, Joel (1990). What the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel, 1948–1965 . Berkeley : University of California Press.
  • Connell, Dan (2001). Rethinking Revolution: New Strategies for Democracy & Social Justice: The Experiences of Eritrea, South Africa, Palestine and Nicaragua . The Red Sea Press. ISBN 1-56902-145-7 .
  • Kawar, Amal (1996). Daughters of Palestine: Leading Women of the Palestinian National Movement . SUNY Press. ISBN 0-7914-2845-1 .
  • Younis, Mona M. (2000). Liberation and Democratization: The South African & Palestinian National Movements . University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-3299-5 .
  • Greenstein, Ran: Class, Nation, and Political Organization: The Anti-Zionist Left in Israel / Palestine , University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Remarks

  1. ^ A b Fred Halliday: Early Communism in Palestine. In: Journal of Palestine Studies , Vol. 7, No. 2 (1978), pp. 162-169.
  2. ↑ See Mario Keßler : The Comintern and the Poale Zion 1919 to 1922 - A failed synthesis of communism and Zionism , in: Work - Movement - History , Volume II / 2017, pp. 15-30.
  3. ↑ Younis 2000, p. 117.
  4. ↑ Bernstein 2000, p. 218.
  5. ↑ Radzisnki, 1996.
  6. ↑ See Mario Kessler : Communist Activist in Palestine and Ofper des Stalinism: Joseph Berger (1904-1978) , in: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Issue I / 2015.
  7. ↑ Beinin 40, 42.
  8. ↑ Bein in 45-48.
  9. ↑ Leg in 46.
  10. ↑ Leg in 46.
  11. ↑ Leg in 52
  12. ↑ Connell 2001, p. 61.
  13. ↑ Kawar, 1996, p. XII.