Arab National Communism in the Jewish State

181 Pages·1997·3.644 MB·English

by  Ilana Kaufman

A rab N ational Communism
in THE
Jew ish State
liana Kaufman
University Press of Florida
Gainesville/Tallahassee/Tampa/Boca Raton
Pensacola/Orlando/Miami/Jacksonville
Copyright 1997 by the Board of Regents of the State of Florida
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
All rights reserved
02 01 00 99 98 97 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kaufman, liana, 1948-
Arab national communism in the Jewish state / liana Kaufman
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8130-1478-6 (alk. paper)
1. Miflagah ha-komunistit ha-Yisre'elit—History. 2. Palestinian Arabs—Israel—Politics and
government. 3. Nationalism and communism—Israel—History. 4. Israel—Politics and govern­
ment. 1. Title.
JQ1830.A98M545 1997 96-21380
327.5'495694—dc20
The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University Sys­
tem of Florida, comprised of Florida A & M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Inter­
national University, Florida State University, University of Central Florida, University of Florida,
University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.
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To my family

Contents
List of Tables ix
Abbreviations ix
Introduction: Posing the Problem 1
Part One. Ethnonationalism and Palestinian-Arab
Citizens in Israel 5
1. Ethnonationalism: Theoretical Conceptions and Dynamics 7
2. Palestinian-Arab Citizens: From Acquiescence to Activism 11
Interpretations of Ethnonationalism among the Arabs in Israel 11
Environmental Factors: Geopolitical Region, State, Economy 13
Charting the Research Issues 16
Part Two. The Communist Party of Israel: An Ideological
and Sociological Profile 21
3. The Programmatic Component 23
Encountering the National Question: The Palestine Communist
Party (PCP), 1919-1948 24
The Cultural Tie: The League for National Liberation 25
The Marxist-Leninist Social Order 28
The National Question 32
The CPI-Front Program and the National Question, 1977-1993 39
4. The Style Component: Structure, Membership, and Activities 43
Structure: The Stalinist Heritage 43
The Social Profile of the Arab Leadership, Cadre, and Membership 48
Activities for Members, Fellows, and the Arab Public 54
5. The Slogan Component of the CPI Party Image 60
The Arab Attribute and the Challenge of al Ard 61
The Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Zionist Attributes 66
The Working-Class Attribute 68
Part Three. Political Mobilization of the Arab Sector and Bases of
Electoral Support for the CPI, 1949-1996 71
6. Social and Economic Change among the Arab Citizens in Israel 73
Incorporation into the Israeli Market Economy 73
Cultural Impact of Incorporation: Change of Social Values,
Norms, and Identity 77
7. Oppositionist and Electoral Politics 80
The Sociopolitical Milieu: Constraints and Strategies 80
The Traditional-Organizational Basis of Electoral Support,
1949-1961 83
The Launching of the Embodiment Strategy: The Military Rule, Land,
and Ethnonationalist Identity 84
The Breakthrough: Disjointed Change, Geopolitics, and the Vote for the
CPI, 1961-1973 89
8. Instituting a Rival Political Establishment in the 1970s 96
The New Electoral Strategy: The Front Alliances 96
Organizing the Intelligentsia 98
Mobilization of Rural Leaders and Mass Action 101
The Turn to Pragmatism: The CPI and Local Elections in
Arab Localities 105
9. The CPI's New Challengers and Countertendencies in Electoral Support
in the 1980s and 1990s 109
Palestinian Nationalist and Ethnonationalist Challenges 109
The Islamic Challenge 117
The Fall of Communism 119
Conclusion 126
The Significance of the Arab Vote for the CPI 129
The Intifada and Future Political Trends among the Arabs in Israel 134
Notes 141
Glossary 159
Bibliography 161 _
Index 169
Tables
Table 7.1. Distribution of Vote in Arab Localities, 1949-59 81
Table 7.2. Percentage of Vote for CPI According to Size of Arab Locality 91
Table 7.3. Vote for CPI in Mixed Cities in Relation to Size of Arab
Community, 1961-92 92
Table 7.4. Distribution of Vote in Arab Localities, 1961-73 94
Table 8.1. Distribution of Vote in Arab Localities, 1977-81 105
Table 9.1. Distribution of Vote In Arab Localities, 1984-96 113
Table 9.2. Pearson Correlation between Socioeconomic Indicators
in Arab Localities 114
Table 9.3. Pearson Correlation of Vote for CPI, PLP, Labor,
and Social Indicators 115
Abbreviations
ADP Arab Democratic Party
CAW Congress of Arab Workers (Mu'tamar)
CHAM Committee of Heads of Arab Municipalities
CPI Communist Party of Israel
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
PCP Communist Party of Palestine
PLO Palestine Liberation Organization
PLP Progressive List for Peace
PMP Progressive Movement for Peace
UAL United Arab List

Introduction
Posing the Problem
Academic and political discourse since the 1970s has grappled with basic para­
digmatic questions on the origins and dynamics of nationalism and ethno-
nationalism. These questions have become more pressing following the col­
lapse of the Soviet system into national-territorial units, the outbreak of
ethnic conflict in former Yugoslavia, and the separative tendencies in Western
countries such as Canada, Belgium, and Italy. Approaches to nationalism dif­
fer in the central explanatory variables for the formation, vitality, and revival
of the phenomenon, particularly in the form of substate nationalism, or ethno-
nationalism. They also differ in their assessment of the socioeconomic dy­
namics involved and of whether the impact of modernization has been univer­
sal and hence ''integrative" or particularist and hence "separative."
The general purpose of this study is to make a contribution to this discus­
sion of the nature and dynamics of ethnonationalism and its relationship to
sociopolitical change. I do so by focusing on the dynamics of a case—that of
the Communist Party in Israel acting as the mobilizing force among Israel's
Palestinian-Arab citizens and promoting a certain brand of integrative ethno­
nationalism. Through this study I intend to examine both the sociopolitical
conditions under which this type of ethnonationalism takes hold among a na­
tional minority and the role played in directing this process by a political party
committed to a class ideology. Analytically, therefore, the study differentiates
among the political and geopolitical environment of the community, the po­
litical organizations active within it, and the members at large who support or
refrain from supporting these bodies.
Ethnonationalism is defined here as a form of collective consciousness of
an ethnic or cultural minority expressed in political rhetoric, behavior, and
ideology. It is examined as the outcome of the sociopolitical and geopolitical
environment and of the interaction between the strategies of mobilization by
political organizations and the community. Integrative ethnonationalism is an
oppositionist strategy of a nonassimilating, subordinate national minority,
aimed at its egalitarian integration into society as an alternative to strategies
of accommodation on the one hand and separatism on the other. The basic
questions I seek to answer are (1) what are the environmental conditions that
are conducive to this type of ethnonationalism? (2) what are the factors that
2 Arab National Communism in the Jewish State
lead a political party to employ one or the other ethnonationalist strategies of
political mobilization? (3) what social bases support this type of ethnonationalist
strategy and what determines the limits of its success?
The specific purposes of this study are three: to explain how the Commu­
nist Party in Israel, using a specific ethnonationalist strategy of mobilization,
gradually built its power and established a hegemonic position among the mi­
nority Arab-Palestinian citizens during the 1970s; to analyze the limits and
constraints of that success, which brought its hegemony to an end in the 1980s;
and to evaluate the impact of the Communist Party's brand of ethnonationalism
on the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel in the 1990s and its future role in
the state.
Historical Background
The State of Israel was declared by the Jews living in Palestine in 1948 follow­
ing the UN decision to replace British Mandate rule with two independent
states, one "Jewish" and one "Arab." The decision to partition Palestine was
the culmination of a protracted struggle between Arabs and Jews that began in
the 1920s in Palestine. The goal of the Jewish Zionist movement, organized in
Europe toward the end of the nineteenth century, was to "territorialize" and
concentrate the Jews of the world in their ancient biblical homeland. The rise
in anti-Semitism in Europe in the 1930s gave impetus to waves of migration
of Jews into Palestine: by 1947 they constituted a well-organized community
of 600,000 people. The Arabs in Palestine, who numbered in 1947 about 1.3
million, saw themselves and Palestine as part of the surrounding Arab home­
land and viewed the Zionist intrusion as part of the European colonial on­
slaught on the Arab Middle East. The refusal of the Palestinian Arabs and the
Arab states to accept the partition as the solution to the conflict resulted in the
1948 Arab-Israeli war. It ended with the Arabs' failure to prevent the estab­
lishment of the Jewish state, the turning of some 650,000 Palestinian Arabs
into refugees, and the division between Israel and Jordan of the area desig­
nated for the Arab-Palestinian state (Morris 1987).
In this study I focus on the Palestinian Arabs who found themselves within
cease-fire lines (the Green Line) in the area controlled by Israel in 1949. They
numbered about 156,000 people, located mainly in 104 Arab villages and town­
ships, in three geographical areas of the country. Despite the growth of this
population to more than 800,000 in the 1990s,1 their demographic spread re­
mained basically the same: over 60 percent live in the Galilee in the north; 20
percent are concentrated in the Little Triangle in the center, handed to Israel
by Jordan; about 10 percent live in the Negev desert in the south; and the rest
are distributed in mixed Jewish-Arab urban localities, mainly in Haifa, Acre,
and Jaffa. While all share Arab culture and identity, they are split along con­