Reflections on the Palestinian Nation: The Al-Ittihad and Al-Jadid Periodicals from a left perspective of the Palestinian Communist Party (Palestine/Israel, 1940-1960)

Abstract

This article aims to present two related journals, but with different projects, the Al-Ittihad newspaper and the literary magazine Al-Jadid. The periodicals were created before the consolidation of the State of Israel in 1948 and are based on a leftist bias, linked to the Palestinian Communist Party. The trajectory of these two media outlets is relevant to the study of Palestinian identity and nation, as they present numerous debates on the relationship between the worker and the Palestinian cause, as well as tracing issues about communism, nationalism and Zionism. The incipient country of the time, Israel, brought significant changes in the region, which appear as concerns of Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals about the effects of the historical colonialism, as well as the transformations of nationalism in Palestine, problematics that are analyzed in this article.