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Mapam
Political party in Israel From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Mapam[a] was a Labor Zionist political party in Israel. Established shortly before Israeli independence in January 1948, it merged with the Ratz and Shinui parties to form Meretz in the 1990s.
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History
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Mapam was established in January 1948 by the merger of the kibbutz-based Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party and the Ahdut HaAvoda Poale Zion Movement. The party's orientation was more Marxist and left-wing than that of the larger Mapai party, and it was closely associated with the Kibbutz Artzi movement. It also took over the Hashomer Hatzair-affiliated Al HaMishmar newspaper. From 1951 to 1979, the party also published Al-Mirsad (“Observation Post”), an Arabic-language newspaper similar in name to its Hebrew counterpart.[3]
The new party was part of the 1948 provisional government with a policy toward Arabs that differed from that of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Its executive committee promoted Jewish–Arab coexistence, opposed the expulsion of civilians and supported the Palestinian right of return after the Nakba.[4] Aharon Cohen, head of the party’s Arab Affairs Department, authored the policy statement "Our Policy Towards Arabs During the War" in June 1948, emphasising these principles.[5] The party opposed the destruction of Arab villages and cabinet member Aharon Zisling raised related concerns in government meetings.[6] Ben-Gurion criticised Mapam's stance, citing the Battle of Mishmar HaEmek and saying: "They faced a cruel reality ... [and] saw that there was [only] one way and that was to expel the Arab villagers and burn the villages. And they did this, and they were the first to do this."[7]
Mapam initially opposed establishing settlements on depopulated Arab land, though this conflicted with the settlement activities of Kibbutz Artzi, which was ideologically aligned with the party. Of 12 new settlements created during May and June 1948, six were Mapam-related groups.[8] In August 1948 proposals were put forward for the creation of 32 new settlements, 27 of which were beyond the proposed United Nations partition line. A compromise policy was adopted, allowing new settlements on the condition that "surplus land" would remain for the possible return of displaced Arabs.[9] Over time, the party shifted its stance the right of return, eventually supporting restrictions tied to the end of hostilities and to individuals deemed "peace-minded".[10] With the explosion of opposition to the Government's proposal to the United Nations in July 1949 that 100,000 Palestinians might be allowed to return, the issue of return quietly dropped.[11]
The gulf between policy makers in the executive and Mapam members who dominated the leadership of the armed forces was revealed following the military operations in the autumn of 1948. In early November the editor of Al HaMishmar, Eliezer Pra'i, received a letter describing events at al-Dawayima. There followed a meeting of the Political Committee on 11 November 1948, which was briefed by recently ousted Chief of Staff of the Haganah, Yisrael Galili, about the killing of civilians during Operations Yoav and Hiram. Cohen led a call for an independent inquiry.[12] The problem for Mapam was that the commanders of these operations were senior Mapam members Yitzhak Sadeh and Moshe Carmel. It was agreed to accept Ben-Gurion's internal inquiry. In December 1948 party co-leader Meir Ya'ari publicly criticised the Israel Defense Forces for using the expulsion of civilians as an "imperative of strategy". This was probably directed at Mapam member Yigal Allon, who had been chief of operations during Operation Danny.[13]
In the 1949 Constituent Assembly elections, Mapam won 19 seats, becoming the second-largest party in the Knesset after Mapai. At the time Mapam did not permit non-Jews to become members and instead sponsored an Arab satellite list, the Popular Arab Bloc, which failed to pass the 1% electoral threshold. Although Mapam held coalition talks with Ben-Gurion, it was excluded from the first government.[14] During the first Knesset, Mapam gained an additional seat when Eliezer Preminger joined after leaving Maki and then setting up his own party, the Hebrew Communists.
In the 1951 elections Mapam was reduced to 15 seats. That Knesset included Rostam Bastuni, the first Arab to represent a Zionist party. The 1953 Slánský trial severely shook the party's faith in the Soviet Union. The show trials, in which mostly Jewish leaders of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia were purged, falsely implicated Mapam's envoy in Prague, Mordechai Oren, as part of a Zionist conspiracy. Following these events and Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, Mapam shifted from Marxist-Zionism toward social democracy.
The ideological shift led to several splits. Avraham Berman, Bastuni and Moshe Sneh left the party and set up the Left Faction, while Hannah Lamdan and David Livschitz created their own party, the Faction independent of Ahdut HaAvoda. Bastuni later returned to Mapam, but Berman and Sneh eventually joined Maki and Lamdan and Livschitz joined Mapai. Four other party members left to recreate Ahdut HaAvoda, though the Knesset speaker did not recognize the group as an independent party during the Knesset session. It also displeased the USSR. By the end of the second Knesset, Mapam's strength had dropped to seven seats. The party won nine seats in the 1955 elections and having distanced itself from the Soviet Union, joined Ben-Gurion's coalition governments. In 1959 Mapam and Ahdut HaAvoda voted against the government's decision to sell arms to West Germany, leading to Ben-Gurion’s resignation.
In the 1959 elections the party retained its nine seats, and despite their previous differences, were included in Ben-Gurion's coalition. In the 1961 elections it again won nine seats, but this time was not part of the governing coalition. The 1965 elections saw Mapam lose a seat, dropping to eight mandates, but enter the coalition government.
Alignment
In 1969 Mapam entered into an alliance with the Israeli Labor Party, forming the Alignment, which won 56 of 120 Knesset seats in the 1969 elections, the highest total ever achieved by a single electoral list. At the time, Soviet commentators called Mapam "one of the most reactionary ones among the left-socialist parties".[15]
Mapam briefly broke away from the Alignment during the eighth Knesset (following the 1973 Israeli legislative election, but returned shortly afterward. The party then remained part of the Alignment until after the 1984 elections, when it broke away due to anger over Shimon Peres's decision to form a national unity government with Likud.
Decline and merger
In the 1988 elections, Mapam won three seats. Facing declining support, in 1992 it joined with Ratz and Shinui to form the Meretz alliance, which became the third-largest Knesset party in the 1992 elections. Al HaMishmar ceased publication in 1995, and in 1997 Mapam formally merged into Meretz along with Ratz and part of Shinui, ceasing to exist as an independent political organization.
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Leaders
Election results
Knesset members
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See also
Notes
- The party's name (Hebrew: מַפָּ״ם) is a Hebrew abbreviation for Mifleget HaPoalim HaMeuhedet (מִפְלֶגֶת הַפּוֹעֲלִים הַמְּאוּחֶדֶת) lit. 'United Workers Party'
References
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