Abstract
“Liberty of the individual is a thing of the past, or the future, in Palestine”, wrote Bernard Joseph, a distinguished member of Israel's “government in the making” in 1948, shortly before Israel was inaugurated as a sovereign state. Joseph's “present” was the dusk of British rule in Palestine. Draconian Defence (Emergency) Regulations suspended conventional liberties ordinary westerners were accustomed to expect and turned Palestine into a police state.Precisely what “liberty of the individual” the esteemed jurist, who held degrees from both McGill University and the University of London, had in mind when he invoked the past of Palestine is not entirely clear. He could not have possibly meant liberty under the Ottoman regime which prevailed until 1918. Ottoman rule in Palestine was authoritarian, feudal and corrupt.
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