Faction independent of Ahdut HaAvoda

The Faction independent of Ahdut HaAvoda (Hebrew: סיעה בלתי תלויה באחדות העבודה, Sia Bilti Talouya BeAhdut HaAvoda) was a short-lived Knesset group in Israel.

Mapai, the leading social-democratic party in Mandatory Palestine, had a leftist 'Faction B' that split off to recreate Ahdut HaAvoda in 1944. This new party merged with the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party in January 1948 to form Mapam. Two politicians of 'Faction B', Hannah Lamdan and David Livschitz, entered the Knesset with Mapam after the 1951 elections.

Mapam was shaken in the aftermath of the Prague Trials. 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. This, and later Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech at the 20th Party Congress in the Soviet Union, led to Mapam moving away from some of their more radical left wing positions, and towards democratic socialism.

Unhappy with the move, several Mapam MKs left the party; on its far-left, Rostam Bastuni, Avraham Berman and Moshe Sneh departed and established the Left Faction. Lamdan and Livschitz also did not wish to remain in Mapam and created the Faction independent of Ahdut HaAvoda on 20 January 1953. The faction ceased to exist on 13 January 1954 when Lamdan and Livschitz both joined Mapai. They later followed David Ben-Gurion into the Rafi party in 1965.

On 23 August 1954 Moshe Aram, Yisrael Bar-Yehuda, Yitzhak Ben-Aharon and Aharon Zisling broke away from Mapam to re-establish Ahdut HaAvoda – Poale Zion. Lamdan and Livschitz did not join this party, remaining in Mapai. Ahdut HaAvoda – Poale Zion lasted until 1968, when it merged with Mapai and Rafi to become the Israeli Labor Party.

• Faction Independent from Ahdut Ha'avoda Knesset website