ISSAM MAKHOUL, chairman of Israel’s Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) and a former general secretary of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI), died on Boxing Day aged 73.

The CPI said it mourned the death of a “true communist fighter… who took part in all our struggles and activities for five decades.

“He was distinguished by his unshakeable progressive and internationalist stance, and by his clear political compass — the compass of Palestinian liberation, and construction of society on the foundations of justice and humanity.”

Makhoul, born in 1952, became active in anti-occupation student politics in the 1970s, joined the Communist Party in 1977 and was a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, from 1999 to 2006. He was general secretary of the CPI from 2002-7, chairman of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies from 2010 on and, since 2023, chairman of Hadash — the alliance of left-wing parties to which the CPI, Israel’s only political party with a mixed Jewish and Palestinian membership, belongs.