The Palestine Communist Party 1919-1948: Arab and Jew in the Struggle for Internationalism

250 Pages·2010·15.93 MB·English

by  Musa Budeiri

First published in 1979 by Ithaca Press, London
© L979 Musa K. Budeiri
This edidon published in 2010 by
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10 9 8 7 4 5 4 3 2 1
0
To the memory of
Wolf Auerbach (Abu Siam)
and
Radwan al Hilou (Musa)
the precursors, who strove to maintain the ideals of internationalism

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments XI
List of Abbreviations xu
Introduction xrn
Chapter I THE BEGINNINGS OF COMMUNISM IN PALESTINE 1
The Comintern and the Colonial Problem
The Birth of the Communist Movement in Palestine, 1919-1929
Chapter II THE ARABIZATION OFTHE PALESTINE
COMMUNIST PARTY 12
Party Activity among the Arabs since 1924 and the
Position of the Comintern on Arabization
The PCFs Characterization of the August 1929 Events in Palestine
The Comintern’s Characterization of the August 1929 Events as a
Revolutionary Uprising
The Party’s Reevaluation of the Events
The Long Process of Arabization 1: The Seventh Congress
of the PCP, December 1930
The Long Process of Arabization 2: Transformation and Activity,
1929-1935
Chapter III PARTY POLICY DURING THE THIRD PERIOD AND
THE INTRODUCTION OFTHE NATIONAL FRONT 45
The Left Phase of the PCP
The Advent of the National Front
Chapter IV THE PCP AND THE ARAB REBELLION, 1936-1939 58
The Party’s Position on the Eve of the Rebellion
The Party During the Rebellion
A The Reaction to the Rebellion
B. Involvement in the Armed Struggle
C. The Setting-up of the Jewish Section
D. The Response to Partition
E. The Renewal of the Rebellion and the 1939 White Paper
The Consequence of the Rebellion
A. Reevaluation of the Party Line
B. The Split with the Jewish Section
Chapter V THE PARTY DURING THE WAR 82
The Position Towards the War
Activity in the Arab Labor Movement
Chapter VI THE NATIONAL SPLIT IN THE
COMMUNIST MOVEMENT 98
Dissension within the Party
The Split and the Formation of the National Liberation League
The Communist Movement in the Jewish Street
Chapter VII THE ARAB NATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT 116
The Arab Workers’ Congress
A. The Communists and the Arab Labor Movement
B. The Split of the Labor Movement and the Formation of the
Arab Workers’ Congress
C. Activity of the Arab Workers* Congress
The League of Arab Intellectuals
A. Origins and Activity of the League
B. The Journal Al Ghad
The National Liberation League
A Political Ideology
B. Political Activity
C. Response to Partition
Conclusion 166
Bibliography 169
Notes 181
Index 231

Acknowledgments
In the course of my research for this study I have benefited greatly from the help
of many people in England, the Israeli Occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan
and Israel. My foremost debt is to the late Radwan al Hilou whose help and advice
were invaluable. I was aided in my search for obscure documents by friends from
the Israeli Communist Party and especially Toufic Toubi from Haifa. Numerous
people, both past and present members of the Arab Communist Parties, shared
with me in the course of long hours of discussion and debate their memories of
past activity and helped me gain an insight into the world of the communist
movement in the Arab East in the thirties and forties.
I am especially grateful for help with the Hebrew material to the late Jabra
Nicola, to Victor Nicola, Moshe Machover and Akiva Orv, all of whom suffered
me in good humor. I would also like to thank the staff of the Israeli State Archives
and the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, the Public Records Office in Lon­
don and the Marx Memorial Library in London.
To Lisa I owe a special thanks for all her help reading and re-reading the
manuscript.
XI
List of Abbreviations
AG AlGhad
AWC Arab Workers’ Congress
AWS Arab Workers’ Society
ci Communist International (journal)
Comintern Communist International
CO Colonial Office
CZA Central Zionist Archives
CS Chief Secretary
CPP Communist Party of Palestine
ECC1 Executive Committee of the Communist International
FALT Federation of Arab Trade Unions and Labor Societies
FO Foreign Office
HAC Higher Arab Committee
IT Allttikad
ISA Israel State Archives
Inprtcor International Press Correspondence
KH Kol Haam
LAI League of Arab Intellectuals
MPS Socialist Workers Party
NLL National Liberation League
PAWS Palestine Arab Workers’ Society
PCP Palestine Communist Party
PRO Public Records Office
WO War Office
Xll
Introduction
When I embarked on research for this book in 1970, to my mind, I was engaged in a
political project of attempting to rescue and reconstruct a slice of history in Palestine
in the years following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The very existence of a com­
munist movement in Palestine uniting within its ranks Arab and Jewish members
pointed to a possible future, at variance with both nationalism and capitalism. In its
short existence, the Palestine Communist Party (PCP) succeeded in bringing to­
gether Arab and Jewish workers on a platform of class solidarity.
Despite numerous shortcomings, the PCP attempted to establish a foothold in
the midst of a colonial encounter of a unique character. In addition to the colonial
power Britain, it faced another adversary in the shape of a Jewish nationalist move­
ment embarked on a colonial settler project. This situation was compounded by
Stalinist domination of both the Soviet state and the Communist International
(Comintern). While eventually overwhelmed by the violent pull of national conflict,
it successfully articulated a broad platform which included all the salient features of
a political program that has stood the test of time. This encompassed recognition of
the imperative of Arab unity as a condition for social and economic transformation
in the eastern part of the Arab world, and internationalism as the precondition for
successful state formation in a multiethnic and multicultural region which after cen­
turies of Ottoman rule was trying to rid itself of British and French colonial rule.
Palestine’s problems could only be resolved in a broad regional context.
In trying to reconstruct a party of men and women, rather than one made up of
ideological platforms, I sought to meet with the largest possible number of (by then,
old) party members and activists. There was, at the time, little published material on
the history of the party, and what existed was either authored by cold warriors
and/or betrayed an Orientalist bias that treated the party as part and parcel of the
master narrative of the contemporary Jewish setdement in Palestine.1 Historical cir­
cumstances led to the excision of the Arab members of the party from the historical
record, and they have become erased from memory.
While not aiming to produce an oral history, it seemed necessary to seek
them out and record their narrative, noting at the same time that those personal
xiii