The communist movement in Palestine and Israel is as old as the twentieth century upheavals that reshaped the Middle East. It is not the story of dominant political forces or large armies, but of a small and persistent current that, for over a century, has tried to carve out a political path distinct from partition, conquest, and exclusion. Palestinian and Israeli communists—Arabs and Jews—built joint organizations, resisted colonialism, opposed military occupation, and spoke for coexistence at moments when the surrounding climate favored division and hostility.
The communists were active among workers in Haifa’s ports, in the railways, and in the oil industry.³ They supported the creation of the Federation of Arab Trade Unions and promoted joint Arab–Jewish organizing, though they faced hostility from both British authorities and Zionist-led institutions such as the Histadrut. During the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939, communists took part in strike committees and demonstrations. Their impact was limited by state repression and suspicion from nationalist forces, but they remained one of the few political currents insisting that Arab–Jewish solidarity was possible.⁴
By the early 1940s, growing tension within the PCP led many Arab cadres to form the National Liberation League (NLL).⁵ The NLL supported workers’ rights, opposed colonialism, and, in line with the Soviet position at the time, endorsed the 1947 UN Partition Plan as a step toward self-determination.⁶
When the State of Israel was declared in 1948, many NLL members who found themselves inside the new borders joined with Jewish communists to form the Communist Party of Israel—Maki (מַפ״ק).⁷ This created a rare binational political framework at a time of war and mass displacement. One of Maki’s leaders, Meir Vilner, a Jewish communist, even signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence.⁸ He would later emerge as one of the parliament’s sharpest critics of Israeli military policies.
From 1948 until 1966, Palestinian Arabs in Israel lived under military administration, facing travel restrictions, land confiscations, and heavy surveillance.⁹ Maki became one of the only legal political frameworks where Arab citizens could organize. The party ran newspapers in Arabic (al-Ittihad, الاتحاد) and Hebrew (Kol HaAm, קול העם), building a bilingual public sphere.¹⁰
Communists won municipal power in towns such as Nazareth, where they repeatedly held the mayoralty.¹¹ Leaders like Emile Habibi and Tawfiq Ziad combined local governance with cultural and political activism. Ziad, also a poet, became a national figure whose words and speeches resonated well beyond Nazareth.¹²
By the 1960s, ideological disagreements deepened. The Arab-led, pro-Soviet and anti-Zionist faction—joined by Jewish leaders like Vilner—split away in 1965 to form Rakah (“New Communist List”), while a smaller Zionist-leaning faction kept the Maki name.¹³
The split coincided with dramatic regional changes. After Israel’s victory in the June 1967 war, Rakah was one of the very few parties in the Knesset to call for immediate withdrawal from the newly occupied territories and recognition of Palestinian national rights.¹⁴ Their stance, condemned at the time as treacherous, anticipated positions that decades later would become part of international consensus.
Throughout these decades, Palestinian and Israeli communists maintained close ties with the Soviet Union and other socialist states. The USSR gave political backing to the NLL and later to Rakah, recognizing them as the legitimate communist representatives in Israel and Palestine. The Soviet press regularly reported on their activities, framing them as voices of peace and anti-imperialism.
This alignment brought resources: training for cadres, scholarships for Arab students in Eastern Europe, and steady coverage in Soviet Arabic-language radio. It also brought constraints, since party positions were often shaped by Moscow’s changing policies—such as the endorsement of the Partition Plan in 1947 or support for détente in the 1970s. Eastern bloc states, including Czechoslovakia and East Germany, also provided forums for Arab and Jewish communists to present their cause internationally. The party’s Soviet alignment gave it international visibility but also fueled accusations inside Israel that it was a foreign agent.
During the First Intifada in the late 1980s, communists inside Israel and in the occupied territories played a role in protests and civil resistance.¹⁶ In the West Bank and Gaza, communist groups reconstituted themselves, sometimes splitting over strategy—some advocating armed struggle, others supporting recognition of Israel alongside a Palestinian state. Inside Israel, Rakah and its allies formed Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) in 1977. Its program combined socialist demands with a clear call to end the occupation and dismantle settlements.¹⁷
Palestinian communists also positioned themselves against the rise of Islamist currents, most notably Hamas. They criticized Hamas’s Islamic fundamentalism, its use of religion as a political framework, and its attacks on civilians, arguing that such strategies undermined the prospects for a democratic and inclusive Palestinian movement. For communists, the path forward lay in secular, class-based resistance and in building institutions that could unite all Palestinians regardless of religion or sect.²³
In parallel, explicitly Marxist–Leninist organizations developed in the West Bank and Gaza. The most prominent was the Palestinian People’s Party (PPP), founded in 1982 as the successor to the underground Palestinian Communist Party of the 1970s.²⁴ The PPP joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and was among the first Palestinian factions to endorse a two-state solution on the 1967 borders. Its leaders maintained that socialism and national liberation were linked, but that the immediate priority was independence and ending the occupation.
A smaller group, reviving the name Palestinian Communist Party (PCP), re-emerged in the 1990s.²⁵ Unlike the PPP, the PCP rejected the Oslo Accords, denounced the Palestinian Authority as a collaborator, and insisted on an uncompromising Marxist–Leninist line. It maintained close ties with regional communist movements and presented itself as the “orthodox” communist current.
Both PPP and PCP have consistently opposed Hamas, with the PPP focusing on the incompatibility of political Islam with democratic pluralism, and the PCP denouncing Islamist politics outright as reactionary and sectarian.²⁶ Though smaller than nationalist or Islamist forces, these parties remain active in unions, civil society, and international solidarity networks, keeping alive the Marxist tradition in Palestinian politics.
In recent years, Hadash and Maki have continued to survive as joint Arab–Jewish movements. They run al-Ittihad, maintain municipal power in some towns, and hold seats in the Knesset. Their work, however, now unfolds in an increasingly hostile environment.
Since October 2023, as the war in Gaza escalated into genocide, Hadash MKs have been among the only voices in the Knesset openly denouncing Israeli policy. In July 2025, tens of thousands of Arabs and Jews joined the largest joint protest since the war began, organized by the Peace Partnership coalition. On the platform, Hadash leaders Ayman Odeh, Aida Touma-Sliman, and Ofer Cassif demanded an immediate ceasefire, an end to starvation in Gaza, and accountability for war crimes.¹⁸
These stances come at a personal cost. Cassif has been suspended from the Knesset multiple times for criticizing the army and calling for international action against Israeli war crimes.¹⁹ He has also been arrested at protests in East Jerusalem.²⁰ Odeh has repeatedly been expelled from the Knesset podium for speeches accusing the government of crimes against humanity.²¹ Touma-Sliman has spoken against the siege of Gaza and the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
Under these conditions—marked by censorship, suspensions, threats, and deepening authoritarianism—these MKs continue to act as one of the last organized voices for Arab–Jewish solidarity in Israel. Their persistence shows that the communist current is not a relic but a small, embattled movement still active in today’s conflicts.
It is sometimes claimed - either out of ignorance or deliberately - that “there are no Israeli communists” or that all Jews in the party are “settlers.” This is both historically and politically inaccurate. Jewish communists have organized in Palestine since 1919 and have been part of Maki and Hadash throughout Israel’s history. Their program has long called for withdrawal from occupied territories and the dismantling of settlements.²² Far from being settlers, they have consistently opposed the settlement project itself.
More importantly, dismissing them as settlers erases their role as one of the few frameworks where Arabs and Jews have acted together politically. Their history is not one of dominance but of resistance—resistance to colonialism, inequality, and the occupation.
The communist movement in Palestine and Israel represents a century-long attempt to build a politics different from the dominant currents of nationalism and militarism. Its leaders and activists—Arab and Jewish—have rarely been in power, but they have persisted through repression, splits, and wars. From early labor struggles in Haifa to protests against the current war in Gaza, they have remained a visible if small current that insists on equality and solidarity.
Footnotes:
- Musa Budeiri, The Palestine Communist Party 1919–1948 (London: Ithaca Press, 1979).
- PalQuest (Institute for Palestine Studies), “الحزب الشيوعي الفلسطيني,” https://www.palquest.org.
- Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948 (University of California Press, 1996).
- Ibid.
- Walid Kazziha, “The National Liberation League in Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies 7, no. 3 (1978).
- PalQuest, “National Liberation League,” https://www.palquest.org.
- Hebrew Wikipedia: “המפלגה הקומוניסטית הישראלית,” https://he.wikipedia.org.
- Palestine Forum, “فصول من دور الحزب الشيوعي الإسرائيلي في السياسة الفلسطينية,” https://palestineforum.net.
- Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
- Makor Rishon, “קול העם ואל-אִתִּחַאד: העיתונות הקומוניסטית הדו-לשונית,” https://www.makorrishon.co.il.
- Yoav Peled, Class and Ethnicity in the Arab–Israeli Conflict (St. Martin’s Press, 1990).
- Tawfiq Ziad, Poems of Resistance.
- Hebrew Wikipedia: “רק״ח,” https://he.wikipedia.org.
- Arab Wikipedia: “الحزب الشيوعي الإسرائيلي,” https://ar.wikipedia.org.
- Communist Party of Israel (Maki), “يوم الأرض: ذاكرة النضال,” https://maki.org.il.
- Graham Usher, Palestine in Crisis: The Struggle for Peace and Political Independence after Oslo (Pluto Press, 1995).
- Hadash official program, al-Jabha, electoral platforms since 1977.
- Palestinian Communist Party, statements on Hamas, in al-Ittihad (1990s–2000s).
- Joost Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories (Princeton University Press, 1991).
- Palestinian Communist Party (West Bank/Gaza), congress documents, 1990s.
- PPP and PCP political statements, al-Ittihad, critical of Hamas’s Islamist politics.
- Haaretz, July 2025, reporting on Peace Partnership demonstration.
- Times of Israel, April 2025, “MK Ofer Cassif suspended over Gaza remarks.”
- Middle East Eye, November 2024, “Israeli MK Ofer Cassif suspended six months for criticizing Gaza war.”
- Al Jazeera, December 2024, “Ayman Odeh expelled from Knesset speech on Gaza.”
- Israel Democracy Institute, “Hadash Platforms,” https://en.idi.org.il.
* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.
