A Comparative Perspective on Israel’s Founding

Abstract

The chapter situates the founding of Israel within a comparative framework, aiming to shed light on both its distinctiveness and its parallels with contemporaneous constitutional debates in other countries. Moreover, the chapter proposes a comparative perspective that diverges from the predominantly Western-centric viewpoint often prevalent in Israeli comparative political and constitutional scholarship. First, it provides a comprehensive overview of the wave of constitution writing in the post-Second World War years, encompassing the adoption of over forty new constitutions between 1945 and 1950, many of which were crafted under conditions of limited sovereignty. Secondly, the chapter examines other cases in which the founding leadership opted against enacting a formal written constitution during their formative stages-specifically, Pakistan and New Zealand. Lastly, the chapter explores the debates in the first Knesset that led to the decision to defer immediate constitution-making. It draws parallels between these deliberations and similar arguments made in the Indian Constituent Assembly advocating for incrementalist constitutional solutions within a written constitution. The Sri Lankan constitution is presented as a counterexample to such an incrementalist approach.