Law And Identity In Mandate Palestine

One of the major questions facing the world today is the role of law in shaping identity and in balancing tradition with modernity. In an arid corner of the Mediterranean region in the first decades of the twentieth century, Mandate Palestine was confront

This book analyzes the changing role of law and social norms in creating tax compliance in mandatory Palestine and Israel. It is of interest to legal, economic, social, cultural and political historians, historians of Israel and the Middle East, and tax scholars.

This dissertation traces the developments of Palestine's law of proof under British rule to explore both the relationship between culture and the rules of evidence, and between law and British colonialism. The conventional wisdom has thus far been that evidentiary rules and legal procedures in the colonies were "anglicized" rapidly and comprehensively, stirring little or no controversy. Such assumptions, however, have until now gone untested. Using Mandate Palestine as a case study, this dissertation demonstrates that evidentiary reform in British dependencies was a great deal more involved and contested than previously assumed. Far from being "anglicized, " Palestine's evidence rules maintained important distinguishing characteristics throughout the Mandate era. Incorporating insights from the political, intellectual and social history of the Middle East, the history and philosophy of science, and legal anthropology, this dissertation explores the factors that coalesced to shape Palestine's unique rules of evidence between 1917 and 1939. Drawing on never before examined archival documents in English, Arabic and Hebrew, including official and personal correspondences, petitions, court records and memoirs, this dissertation provides a nuanced and multifaceted analysis of the creation of legal norms in the colonial context. The dissertation avoids reducing the nature and origin of colonial law to a single feature, exploring instead the ongoing interaction between factors: it analyzes legal debates as concurrently negotiations over national, ethnic and religious identity as well as opportunities to further personal, domestic or imperial interests; it views the colonial courtroom and legal system as simultaneously a site for establishing legitimacy, or furthering British control of the local population, as well as an arena for political contestation and resistance. Though focused in time, place and subject matter, the insights of this study bear directly on our broader understanding of the complex, multifactorial relationship between law and colonialism. The dissertation identifies three distinct phases in the evolution of evidentiary norms in interwar Palestine. The first, pre-1929 phase, is characterized by British attempts to emulate existing Ottoman and indigenous institutions. This attempt reflected a broader British policy of accommodating "custom" and traditional dispute resolution mechanisms, as part of "Indirect Rule." The dissertation traces the cultural filters through which the British interpreted existing law, indigenous criminality and custom, as well as the social, religious and political grounds for Palestinian resistance to British legal reform. In the wake of the 1929 "disturbances, " British anxieties concerning their ability to maintain order led to a new approach, which abandoned operation through traditional institutions. British officials instead aimed at founding the law of proof on purportedly universal principles of science and imported, common-law based legal codes. Yet in practice, evidence law remained marked by colonial difference: in Palestine the British applied experimental and imprecise forms of forensic science, still deemed unfit for English courtrooms. Limiting the availability of common-law procedural safeguards, they also curtailed defendants' ability to effectively challenge such evidence in criminal proceedings. Finally, the dissertation explores the role of law during the 1936 Arab Revolt. Rather than constraining the arbitrary use of emergency powers, legislation during this third phase was designed to mask and legitimate executive abuses and to evade the "rule of law." Experimenting with Palestinian law, British officials pushed the boundaries of common law doctrines governing martial law and administrative detentions, inventing a legal framework that would later serve them in other parts of the Empire.

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

This book traces attempts to establish a non-religious system of Hebrew Courts in British-ruled Palestine.

Analyzes the efforts to forge a progressive and 'authentic' Israeli law that would express Jewish identity.

“A brilliant and bracing analysis of the Palestine question and settler colonialism . . . a vital lens into movement lawyering on the international plane.” —Vasuki Nesiah, New York University, founding member of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) Justice in the Question of Palestine is often framed as a question of law. Yet none of the Israel-Palestinian conflict’s most vexing challenges have been resolved by judicial intervention. Occupation law has failed to stem Israel’s settlement enterprise. Laws of war have permitted killing and destruction during Israel’s military offensives in the Gaza Strip. The Oslo Accord’s two-state solution is now dead letter. Justice for Some offers a new approach to understanding the Palestinian struggle for freedom, told through the power and control of international law. Focusing on key junctures—from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to present-day wars in Gaza—Noura Erakat shows how the strategic deployment of law has shaped current conditions. Over the past century, the law has done more to advance Israel’s interests than the Palestinians’. But, Erakat argues, this outcome was never inevitable. Law is politics, and its meaning and application depend on the political intervention of states and people alike. Within the law, change is possible. International law can serve the cause of freedom when it is mobilized in support of a political movement. Presenting the promise and risk of international law, Justice for Some calls for renewed action and attention to the Question of Palestine. “Careful and captivating . . . This book asks that the Palestinian liberation struggle and Jewish-Israeli society each reckon with the impossibility of a two-state future, reimagining what their interests are—and what they could become.” —Amanda McCaffrey, Jewish Currents

Reprint of work originally published in 1997. New introduction by the author.

The British Army's devastating effectiveness against colonial rebellion is exposed in this military history of Britain's pacification of the Arab revolt in Palestine.