Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T21:53:14.191Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Legal Liminalities: Conflicting Jurisdictional Claims in the Transition from British Mandate Palestine to the State of Israel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2020

Rephael G. Stern
Rephael G. Stern*
Affiliation:
History Department, Law School, Harvard University
*
rstern01@g.harvard.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the legal and temporal dimensions of the transition from British Mandate Palestine to the State of Israel on 15 May 1948. I examine the paradoxical character of Israeli jurisdictional claims during this period and argue that it reveals the Israeli state's uncertainty as to whether the Mandate had truly passed into the past. On one hand, Israel recognized the validity of the Mandate administration's jurisdiction until 15 May; I employ the Israeli trial of the British citizen Frederick William Sylvester to demonstrate how Israel even predicated its own jurisdictional claims on their being continuous with those of its predecessor. In this case, the Mandate administration was cast as having entered the realm of the past. Conversely, the Israeli state contested Mandate laws and legal decisions made prior to 15 May to assert its own jurisdictional claims. In the process, Israeli officials belied their efforts to bury their predecessors in the past and implicitly questioned whether the past was in fact behind them. By simultaneously relying upon and disavowing past British legal decisions, the Israeli state staked a claim on being a “completely different political creature” from its British predecessor while retaining its colonial legal structures as the “ultimate standards of reference.” Israel's complex attitude toward its Mandate past directs our attention to how it was created against the backdrop of the receding British Empire and underscores the importance of studying Israel alongside other post-imperial states that emerged from the First World War and the mid-century decolonizing world.

Keywords

IsraelBritish Mandate Palestinepost-imperial lawjurisdictionprecedentex post facto law
Type
At the Edge of the State
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , April 2020 , pp. 359 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Turner, Victor, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 97Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., 108.

3 Craven, Matthew C. R., “The Problem of State Succession and the Identity of States under International Law,” European Journal of International Law 9, 1 (1998): 142–62, 143CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Koskenniemi, Martti, “Report of the Director of Studies of the English-Speaking Section of the Centre,” in Eisemann, Pierre Michel and Koskenniemi, Martti, eds., State Succession: Codification Tested against the Facts (London: Martinus Nijhoff, 2000), 68Google Scholar.

5 Civil Appeal [henceforth CA] 28/52, Palas v. Ministry of Transportation, 9 Piskei Din [henceforth PD] 436, 447 (1955).

6 On post-World War I Central Europe see, for example, Bischof, Günter, Plasser, Fritz, and Berger, Peter, eds., From Empire to Republic: Post-World War I Austria (New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For post-World War II Asia and Africa, see Kalhan, Anil, “Colonial Continuities: Human Rights, Terrorism, and Security Laws in India,” Columbia Journal of Asian Law 20, 1 (2006): 93–234Google Scholar; Schneider, Leander, “Colonial Legacies and Postcolonial Authoritarianism in Tanzania: Connects and Disconnects,” African Studies Review 49, 1 (2006): 93–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacDonald, Mairi S., “Guinea's Political Prisoners: Colonial Models, Postcolonial Innovation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54, 4 (2012): 890–913CrossRefGoogle Scholar; De, Rohit, “‘Commodities must be controlled’: Economic Crimes and Market Discipline in India (1939–1955),” International Journal of Law in Context 10, 3 (2014): 277–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gould, William, Sherman, Taylor C., and Ansari, Sarah, “The Flux of the Matter: Loyalty, Corruption and the ‘Everyday State’ in the Post-Partition Government Services of India and Pakistan,” Past & Present 219, 1 (2013): 237–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Bayart, Jean-François, “Postcolonial Studies: A Political Invention of Tradition?” Public Culture 23, 1 (2011): 55–84, 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nationalist accounts generally argue for complete discontinuity. Scholarship critical of the successor nation-states, especially work written as part of the wave of postcolonial critique, maintains that the nation-states were reproductions of the colonial state.

8 Cooper, Frederick, “Labor, Politics, and the End of Empire in French Africa,” in Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 230CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Penslar, Derek J., “Is Zionism a Colonial Movement?” in Katz, Ethan B., Leff, Lisa Moses, and Mandel, Maud S., eds., Colonialism and the Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 275–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eitan Bar-Yosef, Villah Ba-g'ungel: Afrikah Ba-Tarbut Ha- Yisreʾelit [Villa in the jungle: Africa in Israeli culture] (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute, 2013). A growing body of literature places Israel/Palestine alongside other postcolonial states, particularly India/Pakistan. See Devji, Faisal, Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kedar, Alexandre, “Expanding Legal Geographies: A Call for a Critical Comparative Approach,” in Braverman, Irus et al., eds., The Expanding Spaces of Law: A Timely Legal Geography (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 95–112Google Scholar; Yael Berda, “Colonial Legacy and Administrative Memory: The Legal Construction of Citizenship in India, Israel and Cyprus” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2014).

10 Israeli nationalist scholars have adopted a discontinuous view of the transition, while scholarship focusing on Israel's treatment of Palestinians in 1948 and after casts the transition as the moment when Zionist settler colonialism (nearly) seamlessly replaced its British colonial predecessor. For an example of the former, see Lahav, Pnina, Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar; of the latter, Korn, Alina, “Crime and Legal Control: The Israeli Arab Population during the Military Government Period (1948–66),” British Journal of Criminology 40, 4 (2000): 574–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Robinson, Shira, Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel's Liberal Settler State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), 72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berda, “Colonial Legacy.”

12 Lahav, Judgment in Jerusalem, 79.

13 On nostalgia, see Bar-Yosef, Eitan, “Bonding with the British: Colonial Nostalgia and the Idealization of Mandatory Palestine in Israeli Literature and Culture after 1967,” Jewish Social Studies 22, 3 (2017): 1–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Massad, Joseph, “The ‘Post-Colonial’ Colony: Time, Space, and Bodies in Palestine/Israel,” in Afzal-Khan, Fawzia and Seshadri-Crooks, Kalpana, eds., The Pre-Occupation of Postcolonial Studies (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 311–46Google Scholar.

15 Chatterjee, Partha, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London: Zed Books, 1986)Google Scholar; Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

16 Great Britain, Colonial Office, and Foreign Office, Palestine, Termination of the Mandate, 15th May, 1948: Statement Prepared for Public Information (London: HMSO, 1948).

17 Israel State Archives (henceforth ISA), G-2/111, 23 Jan. 1948, Shapiro to Joseph, 3. This phrase, which appears in the creation story in Genesis 1:2, roughly translates as “chaos and desolation.” Given its origin, the term seems to evoke a chaos that accompanies creation, in this case that of the State of Israel.

18 Radzyner, Amihai, “A Constitution for Israel: The Design of the Leo Kohn Proposal, 1948,” Israel Studies 15, 1 (2010): 1–24, 5, 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shachar, Yoram, “‘ha-Tyutot ha-Mukdamot shel Hakhrazat ha-ʻAtsma'ut’ [The early drafts of the Declaration of Independence],” Tel-Aviv University Law Review 26, 2 (2002): 523–600Google Scholar.

19 This played out in Acre, though in a fashion different from Jerusalem, highlighting the complicated and unsmooth jurisdictional transition between Mandate Palestine and Israel. The city was not slated to be in the Jewish state in the UN partition plan, but the Israeli military conquered the city between 13 and 17 May. Given the problematic international legal status of the Jews in the city, the Israeli state refrained from declaring the city to be under military rule until July 1948. Fain, Yonatan, Kakh Nolda: Hakamat Maʻarekhet ha-Mimshal be-Yisra'el 1947–1951 [Birth of a state: the establishment of the Israeli governmental system] (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2009), 147Google Scholar.

20 Brownlie, Ian and Crawford, James, Brownlie's Principles of Public International Law, 9th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 414Google Scholar.

21 Levy, Yitzhak, Tishʻa Kabin: Yerushalayim be-Keravot Milhemet ha-ʻAtsma'ut [Nine measures: Jerusalem in the battles of the war of independence] (Tel-Aviv: Maʻarakhot, Israeli Defense Forces, Ministry of Defense, 1986)Google Scholar.

22 The Israeli Defense Forces were officially created on 26 May 1948. Regarding Jewish civilians in Jerusalem during the 1948 War, see Central Zionist Archives, S90/630, 22 June 1948, “Urgent Measures to Stabilize the Economy of Jerusalem”; Shapira, Anita, “Jerusalem in 1948: A Contemporary Perspective,” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society 17, 3 (2011): 78–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Golan, Arnon, Shinui Merhavi Totsaʾat Milhamah: ha-Shetahim ha-ʻArviyim lishe-ʻAvar bi-Medinat Yisraʾel, 1948–1950 [Wartime spatial changes: former Arab territories within the State of Israel, 1948–1950] (Sedeh Boker: Ben-Gurion Heritage Center: Beer Sheva; Beer Sheva University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. Regarding Palestinian civilians in Jerusalem, see Radai, Itamar, “The Collapse of the Palestinian-Arab Middle Class in 1948: The Case of Qatamon,” Middle Eastern Studies 43, 6 (2007): 961–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Shapira, “Jerusalem in 1948,” 107; Levy, Tishʻa Kabin, 336–37.

24 British National Archives, FO 371/68654, 9 July 1948, Jerusalem to Foreign Office.

25 Pappé, Ilan, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948–51 (Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with St Antony's College, Oxford, 1988), chs. 1–2Google Scholar.

26 Regarding the Foreign Office's preparations for the continued presence of British nationals in Palestine following 15 May, see ibid.; ISA, P-10/940 5.1948- 7.1948, “News Bulletin” of the British Community-Jerusalem.

27 Golani, Motti, “Zionism without Zion: The Jerusalem Question, 1947–1949,” Journal of Israeli History 16, 1 (1995): 39–52, 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joseph, Dov, The Faithful City: The Siege of Jerusalem, 1948 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960)Google Scholar.

28 Criminal Appeal (henceforth CrimA) 1/48 Sylvester v. Attorney General 1 PD 5 (1949).] While the term muhzak literally means “held,” I follow Medzini's translation, “administered”; Medzini, Meron, ed., Israel's Foreign Relations: Selected Documents, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 1976), 219–20Google Scholar.

29 British National Archives, FO 371/68654, 8 July 1948, Jerusalem to Foreign Office.

30 See the numerous queries in the British Parliament from 8 Nov. 1948; ISA G-14/5672.

31 ISA P-11/940, 26 July 1948, arrest warrant issued by Y. Meltz.

32 Duckett, Richard, The Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Burma: Jungle Warfare and Intelligence Gathering in World War II (London: I. B. Tauris, 2017), 192CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 The Provisional State Council: A Protocol of Discussions (Tel-Aviv: State of Israel, 1948)Google Scholar, meeting 29 July 1948, 9.

34 Medzini, Israel's Foreign Relations, 1: 219–20.

35 This appointment was made official in an Israeli Defense Force proclamation on 2 August 1948. See CrimA 1/48 Sylvester, 21.

36 1945 British Official Secrets Ordinance. Palestine Gazette, no. 1417, 677–79.

37 ISA G-2/6915, 9 Sept. 1948, Shapiro to Rosen, 3.

38 Ibid., 2.

39 1948 Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordinance, 5708-1948, 1 LSI 64 (1948). It was published in the official gazette on 22 Sept. 1948.

40 Katz, Yossi and Paz, Yair, “The Transfer of Government Ministries to Jerusalem, 1948–49: Continuity or Change in the Zionist Attitude to Jerusalem?” Journal of Israeli History 23, 2 (2004): 232–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Gad Stoltz was the third judge, but he died in the middle of the trial.

42 Also involved in the defense was Jacob Stoyanovsky, a prominent Jewish international lawyer in Palestine. See ISA P-1/932, 10 Oct. 1948, Horowitz to Slaughter and May.

43 Even though the Supreme Court heard appeals following the Sylvester case, it still did not serve as the Court of High Justice and it did not hear administrative and constitutional law cases in the first instance during this period. Instead, the Tel Aviv District Court heard these cases, a fact that further accentuated the liminal nature of the transition period. I thank a CSSH reviewer for pointing this out.

44 For instance, the newspaper HaMashkif praised the court's decisions as “the highest expression of Israeli justice”; see HaMashkif, 17 Nov. 1948. For Frankfurter's assessment, see ISA G-14/5672, 11 Mar. 1949, Frankfurter to Shwarz. For a positive scholarly view of the Sylvester trial, see Kremnitzer, Mordechai, “Mishpatim bithoniyim ve-zekhuyot ne'eshamim: silvester n’ ha-yoʻetz ha-mishpati le-memshelet Yisra'el [Security trials and the rights of defendants: Sylvester v. The Attorney General to the Israeli Government],” in Barak-Erez, Daphne, ed., First Judgments: Reflections upon Decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court during the First Year of Israel's Independence (Tel-Aviv: ha-Kibuts ha-meʾuhad, 1999), 17–21Google Scholar.

45 Regarding the judiciary and the executive's shared interests and outlooks, see Barak-Erez, Daphne, “ve-Higadeta le-Vinkha: Historia ve-Zikaron be-Veit ha-Mishpat [And you shall tell your son: history and memory in the court room],” Tel-Aviv University Law Review 26, 2 (Nov. 2002): 773–802Google Scholar.

46 ISA P-12/940, Trial Proceedings of Criminal Case [henceforth CrimC] (Jer) 2/48 Attorney General v. Sylvester and Hawkins, 84–85; ISA P-11/940, CrimC (Jer) 2/48 Attorney General v. Sylvester and Hawkins, 4 (1948); ISA P-11/940, 4 Nov. 1948, Trial Proceedings of CrimA 1/48 Sylvester v. Attorney General, Hearing 3, 3.

47 ISA P-11/940, 4 Nov. 1948, Trial Proceedings of CrimA 1/48 Sylvester, Hearing 3, 9.

48 ISA P-12/940, Trial Proceedings of CrimC (Jer) 2/48 Attorney General v. Sylvester and Hawkins, 84–85. The court cited HC 67/36, Shawa v. Assistant District Commissioner, Southern District, Gaza, 3 PLR 146 (1936).

49 The defense seems to have conflated the principle against ex post facto law—that is, the promulgation and application of a law retroactively—with its claim against retroactive Israeli utilization of inherited British law, a law that was already on the books.

50 ISA P-11/940, CrimC (Jer) 2/48, Attorney General v. Sylvester and Hawkins, 4 (1948).

51 ISA G-2/6915, 9 Sept. 1948, Attorney General to Minister of Justice; See also ISA G-14/5672, Jan. 18, 1950, Rowson (Rosenne) to Attorney General with Jacob Robinson's 3 Jan. 1950 memo attached.

52 CrimA 1/48 Sylvester, 29.

53 Regarding the use of retroactive law at Nuremberg and subsequent postwar trials, see Pendas, Devin O., “Retroactive Law and Proactive Justice: Debating Crimes against Humanity in Germany, 1945–1950,” Central European History 43, 3 (2010): 428–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 ISA P-11/940, CrimC (Jer) 2/48, Attorney General v. Sylvester and Hawkins, 7 (1948); CrimA 1/48 Sylvester, 25–26.

55 CrimA 1/48 Sylvester, 25–26.

56 Hussain, Nasser, The Jurisprudence of Emergency: Colonialism and the Rule of Law (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 109–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 This literature is extensive. Hussain, Jurisprudence of Emergency; Kostal, R. W., A Jurisprudence of Power: Victorian Empire and the Rule of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

58 Comaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John L, Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America Is Evolving toward Africa (London: Routledge, 2016), ch. 6Google Scholar.

59 Elkins, Caroline, “Alchemy of Evidence: Mau Mau, the British Empire, and the High Court of Justice,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 39, 5 (2011): 731–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 CrimA 1/48, Sylvester, 45.

61 L. and J. J. v. Polish State Railways, 24 International Law Reports 77, 78 (1948) (Pol.).

62 CA 2(TA) 91/45, Forer v. Guterman, 4 Hamishpat 55 (1949).

63 ISA K-61/437, 24 July 1949, Law to Cancel the Administration of Russian Properties Ordinance, 1926.

64 Rosenne, Shabtai, “Israel and the International Treaties of Palestine,” Journal Du Droit International 77, 4 (1950): 1141–75Google Scholar.

65 ISA G-14/119, 7 Apr. 1948, memo by Rowson (Rosenne). See also CA 24/48 Shimshon Palestine Portland Cement Factory Ltd. v. The Attorney General, motion 41/49 4 PD 143 (1950); CA 28/52 Palas v. Ministry of Transportation 9 PD 436, 440 (1955); High Court of Justice [henceforth HCJ], 21-23/48 Sofer v. Minister of Police 2 PD 365 (1949); HCJ 113/49 Sifri v. Ministry of Justice 4 PD 613 (1950). Regarding the Israeli refusal to repay many Palestinian taxpayers and release money from their bank accounts, see Sreemati Mitter, “A History of Money in Palestine: From the 1900s to the Present” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2014), https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/12269876/Mitter_gsas.harvard_0084L_11308.pdf?sequence=4 (last accessed 22 Nov. 2019).

66 See generally ISA P-14/26; ISA G-61/304.

67 A. P. Lester, “State Succession to Treaties in the Commonwealth,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 12, 2 (1963): 475–507.

68 ISA G-12/5674, 23 May 1949, memo by Rowson (Rosenne).

69 Alexander, Charles Henry, “Israel in Fieri,” International Law Quarterly 4, 3 (1951): 423–30, 426, 429Google Scholar.

70 Matthew C. R. Craven, The Decolonization of International Law: State Succession and the Law of Treaties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 46.

71 See Irish Free State Debates, 11 July 1933, cited in Jones, J. Mervyn, “State Succession in the Matters of Treaties,” British Yearbook of International Law 24 (1947): 360–75, 367Google Scholar.

72 Yangtze (London) Ltd. v. Barlas Brothers (Karachi) and Co., 34 International Law Reports 27 (1961) (Pak.).

73 “Problems of State Succession in Africa: Statement of the Prime Minister of Tanganyika,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 11, 4 (1962): 1210–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Rosenne, “Israel and the International Treaties,” 1141. See also ISA HZ-9/2419, 27 Aug. 1948 memo by Rosenne, “The Binding Force of the Treaties of the Mandatory Power on Israel.”

75 Craven, Decolonization of International Law, 84.

76 Dubnov, Arie M., “On Vertical Alliances, ‘Perfidious Albion’ and the Security Paradigm,” European Judaism 52, 1 (2019): 67–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Penslar, Derek Jonathan, “Declarations of (In)Dependence: Tensions within Zionist Statecraft, 1896–1948,” Journal of Levantine Studies 8, 1 (2018): 25–28Google Scholar.

78 Regarding the continued Zionist cooperation with the British during and after World War II, see Segev, Tom, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000), 483Google Scholar.

79 “Israel's Anti-British Policy Is Held a Temporary Phase,” New York Times, 13 Jan. 1949.

80 “Britons Committed for Trial: A Vitriolic Press,” The Times, 21 Aug. 1948.

81 Golani, Motti, The End of the British Mandate for Palestine, 1948: The Diary of Sir Henry Gurney (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 215CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 The Palestine administration published a booklet listing forty-two ordinances in May 1948. Government of Palestine, Legislation Enacted and Notices Issued Which Have Not Been Gazetted (Jerusalem: Government Printer, 1948). See also British National Archives, FO 371/82622; ISA G-1/5666; ISA G-24/5671; ISA G-26/115.

83 ISA G-26/115, 18 May 1948, Hannah to Sharef.

84 Divre Ha-Keneset, Meeting 70, 24 Aug. 1949, 1365.

85 Law and Administration Ordinance, 5709-1948, 1 LSI 1 (1948). Not all provisions of the 1941 Immigration Ordinance were revoked. I thank a CSSH reviewer for pointing this out.

86 Joseph Weitz, Hitnahalutena Bi-Tekufat Ha-Saʻar, Nisan 696-Nisan 707 [Our settlement activities in a period of storm and stress, 1936–1947] (Merhavyah: Sifriyat poʻalim, 1947), 15.

87 Law and Administration Ordinance, 5709-1948 §13.

88 Administrative Appeal (AdmA) 1/49, Zur Shipping Company Ltd. v. Attorney General, 4 PD 288 (1950).

89 For the full text of the Mandate for Palestine, see “The Palestine Mandate,” Avalon Project, Yale Law School, 2008, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp (last accessed 25 Dec. 2019).

90 HCJ 55/25, Husseini v. Government of Palestine, 1 PLR 50 (1925).

91 HCJ 19/47, Rosenblatt v. The Registrar of Lands, 5 ALR 499 (1947).

92 HCJ 5/48, Leon v. Acting District Commissioner of Tel Aviv, 1 PD 58 (1948).

93 Paul Weis, Nationality and Statelessness in International Law (Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands; Germantown, Md.: Sijthoff & Noordhoff, 1979), 146.

94 Republic (Poland) v. Felsenstadt, 1 International Law Reports 33 (1922) (Pol.).

95 Frommer, Benjamin, National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 79Google Scholar.

96 Novick, Peter, The Resistance Versus Vichy: The Purge of Collaborators in Liberated France (London: Chatto & Windus, 1968), ch. 8Google Scholar.

97 Ottoman Bank v. Jabaji, 21 457 (1954) (Jor.); Mogannam, E. Theodore, “Developments in the Legal System of Jordan,” Middle East Journal 6, 2 (1952): 194–206, 205Google Scholar.

98 Meital, Yoram, Revolutionary Justice: Special Courts and the Formation of Republican Egypt (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)Google Scholar, 213–16.

99 ISA GL-35/17097, 1 Jan. 1949, Palmon to Porat.

100 Regarding the Israeli transplantation of Pakistani evacuee property law, see Kedar, “Expanding Legal Geographies.” See also my article, “Uncertain Comparisons: Zionist and Israeli Links to India and Pakistan in the Age of Partition and Decolonization” (currently under review).

101 See “Questions of the Hour,” ha-Praklit 5 (Mar.–Apr. 1948): n.p.

102 Golani, End of the British Mandate, 104.

103 See Palestine Post, 22 Jan. 1948, “Court Can't Consider Plea of Insecurity.”

104 See “Questions of the Hour,” ha-Praklit 5 (Jan. 1948): n.p.

105 Gavriel Strasman, ʻOte ha-gelimah: toldot ʻarikhat ha-din be-Erets Yisra'el [Wearing the robes: a history of lawyering in Eretz Israel] (Tel Aviv: Lishkat ʻorkhe ha-din be-Yisra'el; Sifriyat Maʻariv, 1984), 216–17. It is not entirely clear to what extent the Mandatory courts succeeded in completing their cases. See Palestine Post, 23 Jan. 1948, “60 Trials Postponed.”

106 In the files of the Yishuv's emergency committee is a draft of a law that mandated the continuation of criminal proceedings that had begun prior to 15 May. That law was never put into effect. See ISA G-38/110, 16 Feb. 1948, Cohen to Goitein, and attached Criminal Proceedings (Transfer of Proceedings) Order 1948.

107 Strasman, ʻOte ha-gelimah, 231.

108 The following information is based on the Supreme Court's verdict in the appeal.

109 HCJ 3/48, Katz-Cohen v. Attorney General, 2 PD 681, 691.

110 Ibid., 693.

111 CA 37/48, Bank Ha-Po'alim v. Karvzov, 2 PD 143 (1949).

112 CrimA 65/49, Wahib Saleh Kalil, 4 PD 75 (1950).

113 CrimA 5/48, Schreiber v. Attorney General, 2 PD 148, 152 (1949).

114 Lahav, Judgment in Jerusalem, 83.

115 Palestine Post, 23 Jan. 1947, “Death Sentence for Tiberias Man.” See also CA 8/47, Aziz Abraham Mizrahi v. Attorney General, 14 PLR 47 (1947).

116 ISA G-21/5396, 23 Sept. 1948, Chizik to Ben-Gurion.

117 ISA G-21/5396, 31 Aug. 1948, Rosen to the Government and Sharef; ISA G-21/5396, 9 Sept. 1948, Rosen to Sharef; ISA G-21/5396, 28 Oct. 1948, Rosen [?] to Sharef.

118 Tirshomet Yeshivot ha-Memshalah ha-Zemanit [Provisional government session protocol] (Jerusalem: Government Printer, 1948–1949), 6 Feb. 1949, 52.

119 Ibid.

120 Yifrah, Shlomo, “The 1949 General Pardon Ordinance and Its Effect on Previous Charges,” HaPraklit 6 (1949): 217–19Google Scholar.

121 Tirshomet Yeshivot, 6 Feb., 53.

122 See CA 376/46, Rosenboim v. Rosenboim, 2 PD 235 (1949).

123 The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Record of Proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem, vol. 5 (Jerusalem: Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial, in co-operation with the Israel State Archives and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, 1992), 2100.

124 ISA G-5691/15, 11 Nov. 1956, Rosenne Legal Opinion 43/56, “Regarding the Legal Status of the New Territories that Were Recently Conquered by the IDF,” 2–3.

125 Blum, Yehuda Z., “The Missing Reversioner: Reflections on the Status of Judea and Samaria,” Israel Law Review 3, 2 (1968): 295 n60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.