On Monday, February 10, the Palestinian People’s Party (PPP) held a series of celebrations across the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem to commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the party’s establishment. The PPP was founded in February 1982 as the Palestinian Communist Party (PCP) after prominent Palestinian communists convened to re-establish a party bearing this name. The new party formed relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and joined the latter organization in 1987. In April that year, a PCP member was included in the Executive Committee of the PLO. The PCP was one of the four components of the clandestine United National Leadership in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip during the first Intifada, and played an important role in mobilizing grassroots support for the popular uprising.
PPP leader in Gaza, Walid Awad, told the Ma’an News Agency that “all the storms against the party (that we have weathered) … show that the party is immovable.” Participants in the celebrations held signs calling for Palestinian unity and condemning the Israeli siege. Leaders and members of the PPP, in addition to representatives of other Palestinian factions and institutions, took part in the celebrations.
