Defence (Emergency) Regulations - British Mandate

British Mandate

In the midst of the Arab revolt, the British government passed the "Palestine (Defence) Order in Council, 1937", authorizing the British High Commissioner in Palestine to enact such regulations "as appear to him in his unfettered discretion to be necessary or expedient for securing public safety, the defence of Palestine, the maintenance of public order and the suppression of mutiny, rebellion, and riot and for maintaining supplies and services essential to the life of the community." In 1945, such regulations as had been introduced, and many others, were declared as the "Defence (Emergency) Regulations, 1945". They consisted of 147 regulations occupying forty-one pages of the Palestine Gazette. Alan Dowty writes that the Regulations reflected the preoccupations of a colonial power facing widespread unrest and the threat of war, and effectively established a regime of martial law.

A major part of the Regulations concerned military courts, which could be established by the chief military commander as he deemed necessary. Such courts could try any person for offences committed under the Regulations. Trials would be conducted summarily by three military officers, with no limits to what evidence could be admitted, and no right of appeal. Police and military officers were given authority, on the basis of a suspicion of a violation of a Regulation, to search any place or person and seize any object. Indefinite detention without trial could be imposed by the High Commissioner or a military commander, and any person could be deported even if they were native-born. Extensive powers of censorship, suspension of civil courts, expropriation of property, closure of businesses, and imposition of curfews were also granted.

Although emergency regulation were first introduced in response to Arab rebellion, they were also used against Jewish militant organizations like the Irgun and to fight illegal immigration of Jews. The Jewish population in Palestine vigorously protested the Regulations after they were first issued. Bernard (Dov) Joseph, who later became the Israeli Minister of Justice, said that the Regulations "deprived of the elementary protection which the laws of any civilized country afford its inhabitants", while Richard Crossman, a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in 1946 concluded that, "Palestine today is a police state."