The original Palestine Communist Party was founded in 1919. After the foundation of the state of Israel and the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank, the West Bank communists joined as the Jordanian Communist Party, which gained considerable support among Palestinian Arabs. It established a strong position in the Palestinian trade union movement and retained considerable popularity in the West Bank during the 1970s, but its support subsequently declined. In the Egyptian-occupied Gaza strip a separate Palestinian communist organization was established.
In February 1982, prominent Palestinian communists held a conference and re-established a Palestinian Communist Party. The new party established relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization, and joined the PLO in 1987. A PCP member was included in the Executive Committee of the PLO in April that year.[3] PCP was the sole PLO member not based amongst the fedayeen organizations.
The party, under the leadership of Bashir Barghouti, played an important role in reevaluating Marxism-Leninism as a political philosophy earlier than many other communist organisations in the region. It was renamed in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the Palestinian People's Party, arguing that the class struggle in Palestine should be postponed as the Palestinian people are still waging a struggle of national liberation in which elements of all classes should unite.[4] The renaming also reflected a move by the party to distance itself from the image of communism, an ideology perceived as antagonistic to religion in the Muslim world; however, party members still identify with Marxism.[4]
The party was an enthusiastic advocate of the Oslo Accords; however, it now criticizes the "failure" of the peace process, while still defending the goal of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.[4]
For the 2016 Palestinian local government elections that were initially scheduled for October 2016, the PPP was one of the five left-wing Palestinian factions that formed a joint list called the Democratic Alliance List.[6] At the elections, which took place on 13 May 2017, the Alliance won 5 of the 3,253 contested seats, gaining 0.32% of the votes.
^Gresh, Alain. Review: Palestinian Communists and the Intifadah. Middle East Report, No. 157, Israel Faces the Uprising. (Mar – Apr. 1989), pp. 34–36. Gresh argues that the inclusion of PCP into the PLO leadership indicated an increased influence of the Soviet Union in intra-Palestinian politics.
