On December 1, 1966, the Military Rule imposed by Israel on its Palestinian citizens for nearly 20 years was officially abolished. In preparation for the official announcement in the Knesset, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a communique to diplomatic missions abroad with instructions on the PR strategy around this development.
In January 1966, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol announced his intention to abolish the Military Rule imposed on the country’s Palestinian citizens since the war in 1948. That year, top Israeli politicians and security officials held a series of discussions aimed at formulating the new political, civil, and security order that would replace the Military Rule. Historical records show the true essence of the plan was to abolish the apparatus of the Military Rule without abandoning its underlying principles, which were rooted in the Defence (Emergency) Regulations. For instance, the powers held by the military governors were handed over to IDF generals in the relevant sectors, and the authority to enforce the Regulations was transferred to the Israel Police. In fact, the Military Rule’s abolition gave more power to the apparatuses used to monitor, police and enforce the rules on Palestinian citizens.
One of the key issues discussed was whether or not to open closed zones containing clusters of Palestinian villages depopulated during the war. Their closure for a period of 17 years was intended to control the pace of Jewish settlement in those places by preventing the return of Palestinian citizens of Israel to their villages.
Addressing the Israeli Knesset in November 1966, Prime Minister Eshkol announced the Military Rule would be abolished in a matter of days. “The abolition of the Military Rule is the continuation of a process designed to relieve Arab citizens from restrictions,” he stated. Yet the prime minister’s Arab Affairs advisor, Shmuel Toledano, was not alone in arguing that the abolition was primarily a “psychological matter”. A Ministry of Foreign Affairs document entitled “Ahead of the Abolition of Military Rule” echoes the same understanding. In this document, the ministry instructed Israeli diplomatic missions to “present the abolition of Military Rule as part of a continuous and natural process towards the normalization of the situation of Israeli Arabs and the gradual lifting of restrictions imposed on them due to the security situation and to emphasize that this is mainly an external-psychological change that gives the Arab citizen a feeling of full equality with his Jewish counterpart.”
And indeed, the abolition of the apparatus of Military Rule did not signify the end of the permit regime, and the closed zones and some of the mobility restrictions remained in place. In a letter sent to the prime minister in April 1967, several months after the abolition went into effect, Toledano wrote: “Both the Jewish and Arab public erroneously assumed that upon the abolition of the Military Rule apparatus […] every citizen would be free to travel anywhere without a permit […] but since in practice, hardly any restrictions have been lifted, the result has been disappointment and criticism.” It was not until the end of 1967 that all travel restrictions were lifted, though the rest of the restrictions remained in effect. The Defence (Emergency) Regulations continued to shape the relationship between Israel and its Palestinian citizens for years to come.