Abstract
AbstractThis article traces the careers of 12 Palestinian Arab lawyers who practised law during the last years of the British Mandate in Palestine (1920–1948), and who became Israeli citizens after 1948. The State of Israel made efforts to limit the professional practice of Palestinian lawyers and to supervise them. Yet, despite the pressures, most of them continued their legal practice and became active in the Israeli public sphere. We show that the Palestinian lawyers’ struggle to maintain their practice in Israel was used to assert autonomy for the legal profession, and concurrently, it was perceived as a touchstone for minority civil rights in the state.
Highlights
In 1947, 110 Palestinian Arab[1] lawyers, whose office addresses were in the territories that would soon become the State of Israel, were listed in the British Mandate government’s ‘Roll of Advocates’
Once prosperous, influential urban community of Palestinian Arab lawyers, only a small, heterogeneous and weakened group remained. Members of this group had to deal with the trauma of the 1948 war and adjust to their new status as a minority subject to discrimination in the Jewish state
This article traces the careers of 12 Palestinian Arab lawyers who practised law during the last years of the British Mandate in Palestine (1920–1948), and who became Israeli citizens after 1948
Summary
Israel’s state agents tried to limit the practice of Palestinian lawyers. Our study shows that the bar association and the lawyers in the Ministry of Justice opposed a discriminatory policy against Palestinian lawyers on the basis of the rule of law and equal rights This reasoning disputes Ziv’s assertion, a more comprehensive historical study of lawyers’ public attitudes in nascent Israel is required to determine which sense of liberalism they were committed to, the broad or narrow version. This conceptual framework enables us to observe the links between Palestinian lawyers’ individual careers, their professional group, and some of the historical developments that constructed the status of minorities in Israel. This approach calls for a historical explanation that transcends evident national divisions and integrates a variety of positions, complex interests, and regional and global influences beyond the particular Israeli context
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