Introduction

The mainstream conception today in the imperial core that the Middle East had always been a breeding ground for religious backwardness and reaction, is, to say the least, an inaccurate depiction of the region and what it represented in the 20th century. Back then, the Middle East from Egypt to Iran was a beacon of progressive and leftist thought, and had been debating issues that are still relevant today like gender, queerness, secularism, social justice and so forth. Indeed, these discussions were even more prevalent yesteryear than in the contemporary era, wherein the human-rights discourse represented by so-called “International” organisations—the likes of the UN, Amnesty, Legal Action—tries to force the narrative of a Middle Eastern “awakening” that was only possible by means of market liberalisation.

Rather, the East’s historical trajectory in the 19th and 20th centuries was moving in tandem with the West’s—particularly due to colonialism. And, just like in the West, the Middle East is witnessing a “crisis of secularism” consisting of the distrust in secular, liberal institutions’ capacity to ensure social justice. In particular there has been a surge in political Islamist thought—what has been labeled as the new Islamist movement—across the region, from Iran to Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia and Palestine. The neo-Islamic current’s relationship with modernity is a complicated one: on the one hand it is supportive of efforts to modernise the technology of the state as a defensive measure against Western imperialism; yet on the other hand it holds a nostalgic and arguably false vision of pre-modern Islam which is seen as civilisationally in conflict with the Occident, propagated in part by Orientalist studies (Ahmad, 2003; Cagaptay, 2020; Hallaq, 2012).

Palestine was once the home of a prominent, leftist movement which ideologically tied itself to the anti-colonial struggle. Until the end of the 20th century, the secular current, headed by Fatah, dominated the national liberation movement. However, although the Fatah-led PLO is technically the ruling entity, this isn’t apparent, especially with the latest conflict being framed as a war between Israel and Hamas, an Islamist political movement whose covenant explicitly positions Islam as the “frame of reference” which “determines its principles, objectives and means.” Therefore one has to ask: how did political Islamism take over the narrative of Palestinian national liberation?

The present article will addres the foundational principles of the Palestinian resistance by situating the role of the leftist movement within its framework. The article recounts the history of Palestinian leftists groups, namely the PFLP and its breakaways, the Palestine People’s Party and the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, from their rise in the wake of the 1967 Naksa to their decline and subsequent replacement with the Islamic Resistance Movement. The organisation of Fatah will be excluded from the scope of this article because it is a bourgeois nationalist party and its historical evolution differs from that of the leftist movement despite the two sharing common characteristics. The article’s aim is to study the causes that led to the fall of the Palestinian left and how said causes affected their ideology and political position in the context of national liberation.

I. The Palestinian Resistance and the Left

A.Historical Roots of the Resistance

The Palestinian resistance movement predates the 1948 Nakba events, initiated by the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel. In its earliest, embryonic form, the resistance was part of the Arab nationalist movement directed against European colonialism and its policies, namely the partition of the Arab World and the encouragement of Zionist settlements in Palestine (Valensi, 2017). Its main pillar was the national emancipation and self-determination of the Arab people, which was expressed by the King-Crane Commission on the destiny of the post-WWI Ottoman Empire.

The Palestinian resistance of the 1950’s and 60’s is the spiritual continuation of the interwar efforts to liberate Palestine, notably the Arab Revolt of 1936 which started as a general strike by Arab port workers. The Revolt was in part rooted in class struggle: worker and peasant fighters cancelled debts and reappropriated farmlands they were evicted from following land transfers between Zionist settlers and the Arab elite (Akram-Boshar, 2023).

In reaction to the UN partition and the 1948 war, the All-Palestine Government was established under the leadership of Amin al-Husseini. However, Husseini’s attempt to create a secular state in Palestine ended in failure following Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank and the establishment of the State of Israel (Beinin & Hajjar, 2014).

In 1964, the Arab League established the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as “a mobilizing leadership of the forces of the Palestinian Arab people to wage the battle of liberation.” One of the main pillars of the organisation, as expressed in the Palestinian National Charter, is the national unity of Palestinians regardless of confession under a secular Palestinian state. Although the Charter was supportive of Arab unity, it nevertheless affirmed the Palestinian national identity within the Nation-State framework that the British mandate imposed, and which was a matter of contention among the early resistance movement.

B. The Rise of the Palestinian Left

The advent of the political left in Palestine has its roots primarily in the catastrophic failure of Arab armies in the Six-Day War in 1967 (Bzour, 2015; Hilal, 2009). The Nasserist regime in Egypt took a heavy blow and its regional influence shrank, particularly in the Palestinian theatre. The nationalist Fatah party wasn’t the only actor to take advantage of the Egyptian void; Marxists also took the opportunity to consolidate their political presence. Several left-wing organisations joined the PLO and contested Fatah’s exclusive authority over the mational liberation movement (Leopardi, 2024).

One of the organisations in question is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist militant group. Founded in the aftermath of the Naksa, the PFLP quickly became a notorious organisation carrying military operations across the region and the Arab World. As a matter of fact, the leaders of the PFLP believed in the wider socialist revolution extending beyond the simple liberation of a Palestinian nation. The Popular Front recruited guerilla fighters from the Palestinian territories and even among the diaspora communities in Lebanon and Jordan by infiltrating university campuses (Anderson, 2011). However, quickly after its creation, several groups split from the mother organisation due to ideological and political differences: the Syrian-backed PFLP - General Command in 1967, the maoist Popular Democratic FLP (later shortened to DFLP) in 1968, and the Popular Revolutionary FLP (PRFLP). Despite the splits, the PFLP remained the leading force of the leftist movement and the second biggest organisation in the PLO.

While the PFLP’s leaders and members mostly belonged to the educated bourgeoisie, the Palestine Communist Party (CPC) was more so involved in the class struggle and labor movement in the occupied territories. Originally founded in 1919, the Communist Party was dissolved following the annexations of Palestinian territories in 1948 between Israel, Jordan and Egypt; communists in the West bank joined the Jordanian Communist Party while those in the Gaza strip established their own organisation. Palestinian communists reunited in 1982 to reestablish the party and five years later joined the PLO. The PCP’s popularity stems from its central role in mobilising grassroots support in the first Intifada (Gresh, 1989).

Another organisation that emerged from the defeat of 1967 was the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPFS). The party was originally Marxist-Leninist in inspiration, yet it later aligned itself with Fatah only to fall out with the latter soon after. The organisation’s main supporter was the Baathist regime in Syria. The PPSF is an outlier in the leftist movement considering its perplexing political positions and contradictory ideals despite perceiving itself as “left-wing.”

In sum, the leftist movement—which in reality is a broad umbrella term used for diverse ideologies of different degrees of radicalism (Muallem, 2008)—formed half of the membership of the PLO. Throughout the 70’s and 80’s, the impact of the movement was felt in the occupied territories, in the Arab World and overseas. However, this wasn’t to last for too long.

II. Turmoil of the Left: Causes and Consequences

A. Decline of the Palestinian Left in its Local and Global Contexts

The very first parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories were held in January 1996. Out of three and a half million votes, the left collectively acquired less than six percent. But the causes behind such dismal results are older than the elections themselves.

There are of course the internal issues that generally plague leftist movements, namely infighting and lack of unity. There were up to seven groups representing the political left, the majority of them being the product of splits and breakaways: The PFLP-GC and DFLP broke away from the PFLP, and the Palestinian Democratic Union (FIDA) itself split from the DFLP. Furthermore, the leftist movement was underfunded, its biggest financial source being the Palestinian National Fund which is controlled by Fatah (Muallem, 2008).

There are also factors that are special to the Palestinian left. Firstly, Israel saw the leftist movement as one of the biggest threats to its national security. While Arafat and the nationalists were keen on peace agreements (as the Oslo accords clearly evince), the left was adamantly opposed to any agreement with the Zionist entity. This pushed Israel to take strong measures against leftist movements since their inception: from arrests to exiles and assassinations. The leadership was sent into exile in the early seventies; in 1982 the leftist student movement was targeted for thwarting Israel’s plans to undermine the PLO; and in the first Intifada of 1987, the leftit movements were the first targets of Israeli extermination policies (Muallem, 2008). Secondly, some authors observed the ideological duplicity of the Palestinian left which couldn’t rid itself of nationalist (see pan-Arabist) tendencies. According to Al Bzour (2015), “the [Palestinian] leftist ideology was not in its foundation a response of a class reality.” The leadership failed to go beyond “mere ulcation and indoctrination of the popular base,” and its “real crisis lays in the difference between thought and practice.”

On the global stage, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the last decade of the 20th century took a heavy toll on leftist movements around the world. Even if the Soviets were not directly involved in the leftist movements of Palestine, the Soviet Union was the symbolical and ideological leader thereof; and its dissolution was followed by a trend of de-radicalisation. In 1991, the Communist Party, renamed to the Palestinian People’s Party, rebranded itself as a social democratic party, sidelining the class struggle for an indefinite amount until national liberation is complete. In the same year, the social democratic FIDA split from the DFLP.

The fall of the USSR has led the Western narrative to shift from a civilisational clash with the Communist East to a clash with the Islamic East.

B. Hamas and the Ascent of Political Islamism into Power

For the longest time, Islamists were marginalised in the Arab World. To survive persecution, they were forced to identify with the nationalist and pan-Arabist movements. Islamic groups’ activity in the first half of the 20th century focused on social and cultural issues; they established mosques and schools meant to nurture a “new Islamic Generation.” However, following the defeats of the sixties and the disillusionment with the national liberation movement, the political Islamists managed to gain traction, particularly in the Gaza strip where Hamas saw its establishment.

Hamas (acronym for the “Islamic Resistance Movement”) was born out of the first Intifada in 1987 during which the organisation gained credibility for its active participation. Hamas, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, presented itself as an alternative to the secular liberation movement of the PLO, at a time when the latter was backtracking on its objectives. Article 11 of the 1988 Hamas Covenant reads:

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [endowement] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that.

This opposition to the relinqushing of Palestinian land is evidenced in Hamas’ rejection of the Madrid talks in 1991 and then the Oslo Accords in 1996 and finally its boycott of the 1996 elections. Despite this marginalisation, its popular base was growing like never before. Hamas took advantage of the void created by the nationalist’s unpopularity and the leftist’s degeneration, to further expand its message and activity politically and militarily. The al-Qassam Brigades were established in 1991, and its impact was especially felt in the second Intifada in 2000. In the 2006 parliamentary elections, Hamas candidates amassed 44 percent of the votes, gaining 74 seats out of 132 seats; meanwhile Fatah gained only 44 seats. The fear that the shocking results incurred in the Fatah leadership as well as in the Israelis led since then to a complete interference and shutting down of every initiative to organise new elections (Abu Amer, 2021; Barron 2019), the last attempt being in 2021 which ended in an indefinite postponement by the President Mahmoud Abbas.

Concluding Remarks: Class Struggle “Lost” to Islamism?

Of course, the endemic problems and strategic failures of the Palestinian left, especially after the end of the cold war, has pushed the working class to seek justice in the Islamist narrative, particularly in a marginalised and isolated Gaza strip. Once a legitimate political actor to be contended with, the left has virtually lost all influence it had on the Palestinian people, more so among the native population, and became overshadowed by the nationalist-Islamist rivalry. Hamas and the other Islamist groups have succeeded in mobilising the hopeless masses for a bigger cause.

That being said, we should not look at the above predicament from a pessimistic lens. For Islam, and generally religion, should not necessarily be seen as antagonistic to the leftist cause, that is, the emancipation of the working class. We have seen several movements who successfully integrated religion into Marxism; most notable cases being liberation theology in South America (Morales-Franceschini, 2018) and Sufi Sibghatullah’s “mystical Marxism” in South Asia (Raza, 2022).

The PFLP has made a step in the right direction by strengthening its ties with Hamas and collaborating in military operations. As of July 2022, the PFLP, along with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were taking steps to create a National Liberation Front in an attempt to address internal divisions and to cooperate with and to rebuild the PLO. The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades (PFLP’s military wing) have also been involved in the Al-Aqsa Flood operation. Given the Palestinian left’s current fragility, ideological purity should be forsaken in favor of pragmatism and effective praxis.