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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2020
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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31 ISA P-11/940, 26 July 1948, arrest warrant issued by Y. Meltz.
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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.
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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.
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63 ISA K-61/437, 24 July 1949, Law to Cancel the Administration of Russian Properties Ordinance, 1926.
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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.
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75 Craven, Decolonization of International Law, 84.
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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.).
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99 ISA GL-35/17097, 1 Jan. 1949, Palmon to Porat.
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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.
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122 See CA 376/46, Rosenboim v. Rosenboim, 2 PD 235 (1949).
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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.
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