Government and Institutions
The Mandate territory was divided into administrative regions known as districts and administer by the office of the British High Commissioner of Palestine.
Britain continued the Millet system of the Ottoman Empire whereby all matters of a religious nature and personal status were within the jurisdiction of Muslim courts and the courts of other recognised religions, called confessional communities. The High Commissioner established the Orthodox Rabbinate and retained a modified Millet system which only recognised eleven religious communities: Muslims, Jews and nine Christian denominations (none of which were Christian Protestant churches). All those who were not members of these recognised communities were excluded from the Millet arrangement. As a result, there was no possibility, for example, of marriages between confessional communities, and there were no civil marriages. Personal contacts between communities were nominal.
Read more about this topic: British Mandate For Palestine
Famous quotes containing the words government and/or institutions:
“I will never accept that I got a free ride. It wasn’t free at all. My ancestors were brought here against their will. They were made to work and help build the country. I worked in the cotton fields from the age of seven. I worked in the laundry for twenty- three years. I worked for the national organization for nine years. I just retired from city government after twelve-and-a- half years.”
—Johnnie Tillmon (b. 1926)
“You can’t talk about a kind of democracy unless those who are affected by decisions make those decisions whether the institutions in question be the welfare department, the university, the factory, the farm, the neighborhood, the country.”
—Casey Hayden (b. c. 1940)