In October 1948, after the formation of the State of Israel, the NLL merged with Maki. Since both Arab and Jewish Communists still hoped to establish two states on the terms of the UN Partition Plan, it was decided that the Maki and NLL party organizations would merge in the areas that the UN had laid out for a Jewish state, while the NLL would continue to exist as an independent party in areas of Israel that were to have been part of an Arab state under the UN plan.[2] NLL leaders were added to an expanded Maki Central Committee.[3] In practice, the NLL quickly ceased to exist within Israel except in name, and in April 1949 al-Ittihad and its Hebrew sister paper, Kol HaAm, quietly dropped all references to the NLL.[4] On July 20, 1949, Egypt destroyed the remnant of the NLL existing in Gaza, arresting 33 people.[5] In 1951, its members in the West Bank joined the Communist Party of Jordan.[6]