Mapam

File:Pre-State_Zionist_Workers'_Parties_chart.png, chart of zionist workers parties, 360px, right

rect 167 83 445 250 Hapoel Hatzair
rect 450 88 717 265 Non Partisans
rect 721 86 995 243 Poalei Zion
rect 152 316 373 502 HaPoel HaMizrachi
rect 552 328 884 512 Ahdut HaAvoda
rect 891 301 1111 534 Poalei Zion Left
rect 283 519 668 928 Mapai
rect 5 665 169 1432 HaOved HaTzioni
rect 697 747 918 953 Ahdut HaAvoda Movement
rect 755 977 959 1234 Ahdut HaAvoda Poalei ZIon
rect 775 1265 1136 1444 Mapam
rect 966 1023 1232 1217 HaShomer Hatzair Workers' Party
rect 1044 572 1228 766 HaShomer HaTzair
rect 942 769 1177 919 Socialist League of Palestine
rect 387 1275 734 1447 Mapai
rect 365 1260 174 1447 HaPoel HaMizrachi
rect 36 6 1225 81 Labor Zionism

desc bottom-left

Mapam was a left-wing political party in Israel. It is one of the antecedents of the Meretz party and its successor, The Democrats.

History

Mapam was formed by a January 1948 merger of the kibbutz-based Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party and the left-Labor Zionist Ahdut HaAvoda Poale Zion Movement. The party was originally Marxist-Zionist in its outlook, and represented the left-wing Kibbutz Artzi movement. It also took over the Hashomer Hatzair-affiliated newspaper ''Al HaMishmar'' (''On the Lookout'').

In the elections for the first Knesset, Mapam received 19 seats, making it the second-largest party after the mainstream Labor Zionist Mapai. The party did not allow non-Jews to be members at the time, but it also set up an Arab list, the Popular Arab Bloc, to contest the elections (a tactic also used by Mapai, with whom the Democratic List of Nazareth was affiliated). However, the Arab list failed to cross the 1% electoral threshold. After the elections, the party conducted extensive negotiations with Ben-Gurion for inclusion in the coalition government, but was eventually excluded. During the session it gained one seat when Eliezer Preminger joined after leaving Maki and then setting up his own party, the Hebrew Communists.

In the 1951 elections the party dropped to 15 seats and again was not included in the coalition. But it did become the first Zionist party to have an Israeli Arab, Rostam Bastuni, representing it in the Knesset.

From Mapam's point of view, the most important event of the second Knesset was the 1953 Prague Trials, which 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. After the Prague Trials and later, Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech at the 20th Party Congress in the Soviet Union, Mapam moved away from some of its more radical left-wing positions and toward social democracy.

This created a split in the party. Avraham Berman, Rostam 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.

Although it had been reduced to seven seats by the end of the second Knesset, the party picked up nine seats in the 1955 elections. Having effectively renounced the Soviet Union, Mapam was now included in Ben-Gurion's coalitions for both the seventh and eighth governments. But it was to blame for Ben-Gurion's resignation and the collapse of the government on 5 July 1959 when it and Ahdut HaAvoda voted against the government on the issue of selling arms to West Germany but refused to leave the coalition.

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. In January 1969 the party formed an alliance with the Israeli Labor Party, which was named the Alignment. The Alignment went on to win the highest-ever number of seats in the 1969 elections (56 out of 120). At the time, Soviet commentators called Mapam "one of the most reactionary ones among the left-socialist parties".

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, taking six seats with it (later reduced to five when Muhammed Wattad defected to Hadash). But in the 1988 elections the party won only three seats.

As a result of its declining support, Mapam joined with Ratz and Shinui to form Meretz, a new left-wing, social-democratic and pro-peace alliance, which became the third-largest party in the Knesset in the 1992 elections.

In 1995 the party's newspaper ''Al HaMishmar'' ceased publication.

In 1997 the merger into Meretz with Ratz and part of Shinui (much if not most of Shinui's membership did not agree with the merger, and reformed as an independent party headed by Avraham Poraz) was formalized, and Mapam (and Ratz) ceased to exist.

From 1951 to 1979, Mapam also published an Arabic newspaper, ''Al-Mirsad'' (''Observation Post'', a similar name to the Hebrew newspaper ''Al HaMishmar'', which means "on the lookout"). It appeared weekly, except for a short period as a daily.

1948 policy towards Arabs

Mapam entered the 1948 coalition government with a radically different policy towards Arab civilians from that pursued by David Ben-Gurion. Mapam's executive committee advocated Jewish–Arab coexistence, opposed the expulsion of civilians and was in favor of the right of refugees to return to their homes after the war. In June 1948 all cadres were issued with a policy statement, "Our policy towards Arabs during the war", written by Aharon Cohen, the Head of Mapam's Arab Affairs Department. Mapam particularly opposed the destruction of Arab houses. Aharon Zisling, one of two Mapam members of the cabinet, raised the issue repeatedly toward the end of June. At a Mapai Centre meeting, 24 July 1948, Ben-Gurion accused Mapam of hypocrisy; citing events at Mishmar HaEmek, he said: "They faced a cruel reality ... ndsaw that there was nlyone 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."

Mapam also opposed the establishment of settlements on Arab land. But this created a dilemma as the kibbutz movement ideologically closest to Mapam, Kibbutz Artzi, was in the vanguard of the settlement movement. Of 12 new settlements created during May and June 1948, six were Mapam-related groups. In August 1948, proposals were put forward for the creation of 32 new settlements, all but five of which were beyond the proposed UN partition frontier. As a compromise Mapam agreed on condition that there was sufficient "surplus land" at each location to allow for the original inhabitants' return. In the following months Mapam further diluted its position on the right of refugees to return by adding that there should be no return while a state of war existed and then it should only apply to the "peace-minded". With the explosion of opposition to the Government's proposal to the UN, 28 July 1949, that 100,000 might be allowed to return, the issue of return quietly dropped off the agenda.

The gulf between policy makers in the executive and Mapam members who dominated the leadership of the armed forces was again revealed following the military operations in the autumn of 1948. In early November the editor of the Mapam newspaper, Eliezer Pra'i, received a letter describing events at al-Dawayima. There followed a meeting of the Political Committee, 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. 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, party co-leader Meir Ya'ari publicly criticised the IDF 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.Morris, page 211. 12 December 1948 at Kibbutz Artzi Council. "I am appalled." A memo, probably written by Allon, had argued that the refugees clogged roads, caused economic problems, damaged moral and would lead to anti-government demonstrations.

Leaders

Election results

Knesset members

See also

*Labor Zionism
* Hashomer Hatzair movement

Notes

References

External links

Party history
Knesset website
Hashomer Hatzair/Mapam Archive
at marxists.org
MAPAM
A brief introduction to MAPAM's views on the Middle East and international issues. Tel Aviv, International Department of MAPAM, June 1985
MAPAM
by Susan Hattis Rolef. ''Encyclopaedia Judaica'' article at encyclopedia.com

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Defunct political parties in Israel
Zionist political parties in Israel
Political parties disestablished in 1997
Israel–Soviet Union relations
Socialist parties in Israel
Labor Zionism
Words and phrases in Modern Hebrew
Meretz