Since its establishment, the Jewish state has pursued a repressive approach against Palestinians. Some of these measures have been carried out as legal enactments, providing a veneer of legitimacy. These racially discriminatory laws, depriving the indigenous population of their legal rights while exerting political and security pressure, are rooted in a law that dates back to the colonial era under British rule. This legislation, known as the Emergency Defense Regulations, was introduced by the British Mandatory government. Following the establishment of the Jewish state, the provisions of the same law have been further reinforced to systematically suppress Palestinians.
The central problem addressed in this article is the persistence of the aforementioned law before and after the founding of the Jewish state, the origins of the law, the arguments advanced by its proponents and opponents, and the specific ways it has been implemented against Palestinians, materialized by concrete examples. The article’s hypothesis is that the ongoing state of emergency in Israel, as an entrenched legal structure, has concentrated power in the executive branch and undermined democratic processes and legal oversight, effectively institutionalizing a form of permanent governance based on a “State of Emergency” within Israel’s political system. Palestinians remain the primary target of this security-oriented approach, and the law functions to facilitate measures taken against them. This hypothesis is substantiated through extensive evidence presented in the concluding sections of the article.