During the Military Rule (1948-1966), the Military Rule itself came to be the sole representative of the state vis-à-vis the country’s Palestinian public. Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett went so far as to ask other members of the cabinet to “refrain from responding to Palestinian citizens” who contact them directly “but rather answer only through local military officials.” A letter from the director of the Ministry of Justice Legislation Department clarified that this demand constituted discrimination and that it contradicted “declarations by the government regarding equal rights for all residents.”
In February 1950, the early days of the Military Rule, Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett wrote a letter to all other cabinet members, asking them to instruct their staff never to answer communications from Palestinian citizens – no matter how trivial or important the matter was – without consulting and coordinating with Military Rule officials. Sharett also added that it would be preferable if government ministries refrained from responding to Palestinian citizens directly but rather answer only through local military officials. Sharett’s letter was included, along with many other Military Rule era documents, in THE MILITARY RULE 1948-1966: ANNOTATED DOCUMENT COLLECTION, a book published by Akevot Institute (and can be found on page 109).
“All correspondents have the same wish – to get around the [Military] Rule,” Sharett pronounced in the letter he wrote to the ministers, adding the explanation that this was “because the [Military] Rule is unwelcomed by them and an inconvenience to them.” In those days, the Military Rule acted as the state’s representative vis-à-vis the Palestinian public in Israel and, at the demand of the government, was the only institution Palestinians could contact. This not only drove the growth in the Military Rule’s strength and its development into an all-powerful regime in the areas under its purview, but it also enabled the strict monitoring and control of Palestinian citizens.
The letter posted here was written by Haim Yosef Zadok (Wilkenfeld), then the director of the Ministry of Justice Legislation Department, and later Minister of Justice in Yitzhak Rabin’s first government, in response to Sharett’s letter. Wilkenfeld’s letter, dated March 13, 1950, is addressed to Minister of Justice Pinhas Rosen, states unequivocally that Sharett’s instructions “amount to blatant discrimination between the country’s residents on the basis of race, discrimination that contradicts declarations by the government regarding equal rights for all residents.” Wilkenfeld wrote that the reasons cited by Sharett were egregious and unjustified and lay the “foundation for a system of racial discrimination.”
No further correspondence has been found with respect to this issue to date, but the Military Rule continued to serve as the main tool for state actions related to Palestinian citizens of Israel throughout its duration.
