Palestinian Revolutionary Communist Party

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PALESTINIAN REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY

Palestinian political party (al-Hizb al-Shuyuʿi al-Thawri al-Filastini) founded in 1982 by Arabi ʿAwad. ʿAwad, a teacher from Nablus, had been the secretary of the Jordan Communist Party (JCP) in the West Bank, the Palestinian successor to the pre-1948 Palestine Communist Party (PCP), which had included both Jews and Arabs. After a long period of imprisonment in Jordan, ʿAwad was deported to Lebanon in 1973. In 1980 he founded the (Palestinian) Communist Organization of Lebanon as a branch of the JCP but it collapsed following a Palestinian-Jordanian split in that party. The Palestinian branch of the JCP (known as the Palestinian Communist Organization) renamed itself the Palestine Communist Party, and its central committee, changing its political orientation, now favored negotiating with Israel. The Palestinian Revolutionary Communist Party (PRCP), led by ʿAwad, advocated continued armed struggle. In 1985, opposed to the policies of Yasir Arafat, the PRCP joined the Palestinian National Salvation Front, based in Damascus. At the beginning of the 1990s, weakened by the fall of communism in the Soviet Union, the PRCP tried to draw closer to Iran. Opposed to the 1993 Oslo Accords, this group joined the Palestinian opposition front, united in the Alliance of Palestinian Forces (APF).

SEE ALSO Alliance of Palestinian Forces;Arafat, Yasir;Palestinian National Salvation Front.

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