Israel's provisional state council and government

Abstract

The self-administration achieved by the Jews of Palestine served them well in the unsettled period which followed the United Nationals Assembly decision of 29 November 1947 to partition the country. Arab opposition to the scheme and the consequent refusal of Britain to facilitate its implementation, did not deter the Community and Zionist bodies, working in close collaboration, from laying the foundations of the projected Jewish State. When David Ben Gurion read out the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel in the Hall of the Tel-Aviv Museum on 14 May 1948, he spoke as the Chairman of the People's Council (Moetzet Ha'am), composed for the most part of the membership of the Palestine Zionist Executive (better known by then as the Jewish Agency Executive) and of the Executive Committee of the Community's National Council. Made to coincide with the termination of the Mandate, the Declaration provided for the transformation of the 37-man People's Council into the Provisional State Council (Moetzet Hamedina Hazmanit), which was to serve as the country's provisional legislature for the first nine months of independence. The executive arm of the People's Council, the People's Administration (Minhelet Ha'am), consisting of thirteen members, became the Provisional Government by the same instrument. The form and composition of the Provisional Council and Government were the result, to some extent, of contingency. The United Nations resolution on partition required the establishment in the new State, before I April 1948, of only one body, a 'Provisional Council of Government', to act both as administrative and legislative authority until a Constituent Assembly, democratically elected, should choose a Provisional Government.' In conformity with that resolution the National Council of the Community provided at its meeting on 1 March for the setting up of the Provisional Council of Government to be composed of the Zionist and Community Executives, with the authority to co-opt additional members from groups not represented on either of those two bodies. A few weeks later, when asking for the due appointment of the Provisional Council of Government by the United Nations Palestine Commission charged with implementing the partition scheme, the Zionist and Community authorities supplied a list of 25 names for the membership.2 The Commission, having been in effect prevented by the Mandatory from carrying out its assignment, even to the point of being refused entry into Palestine until two weeks before the date set for the termination of the Mandate, did not comply with the request of the Jewish representative bodies. Moreover the Palestine Government had warned against any attempt to set up institutions of the Jewish State while the Mandate was still in force. Then, on 19 March, the United States proposed a trusteeship for Palestine which would have the effect of deferring partition indefinitely.