PALESTINE COMMUNIST PARTY

Created in January 1922 in Palestine by Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union who had become disaffected with Zionism. The Palestine Communist Party (PCP) was recognized by and accepted into the Comintern, the international organization of communist parties directed from Moscow, in 1924, and thereafter found itself divided between the directives of the Comintern leadership and the nationalist demands of both the Arab and Jewish communities. In the late 1920s Arabs began to join, and in the 1930s the party, at the direction of the Comintern, began to "Arabize" the party and bring Arabs into the leadership. There were ideological purges in 1932 and 1936, and the party also fractured along ethnic lines during the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939, after which it favored Arab nationalism and denounced Zionist imperialism. In 1943, tensions between Jews and Arabs prompted a breakup, and in 1944 most of the Palestinian membership joined the newly created National Liberation League (NLL) (Usbat al-Taharrur al-Watani).

Four years later, Soviet support for the partition of Palestine caused a break between Jewish communists and Palestinian Arab communists. After the Arab-Israel War (1948) the by then mostly Jewish PCP became the Israel Communist Party, and many Palestinians inside Israel, including members of the NLL, joined it. In the Gaza Strip, NLL and former Palestinian PCP members created the Communist Party of Gaza. The NLL continued in the West Bank until 1951, when many of its members joined with Jordanian communists to form the Jordan Communist Party (JCP). The JCP after 1967 became active in resistance to Israeli occupation, and in 1975, its West Bank branch became the Palestine Communist Organization (PCO). In 1982, after internal fighting, the JCP split, and the Palestinians in it, and in the PCO, formed a new Palestine Communist Party, which gave its support to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In April 1987 the Palestine National Council (PNC) elected a PCP representative to the PLO's executive committee. In 1991, as a consequence of the fall of communism in the Soviet Union, the PCP changed its name to the Palestinian People's Party (PPP).

SEE ALSO Arab-Israel War (1948);Gaza Strip;Palestine Liberation Organization;Palestine National Council;Palestinian People's Party;West Bank.