Defence (Emergency) Regulations

The Defence (Emergency) Regulations are an expansive set of regulations first promulgated by the British authorities in mandatory Palestine in 1945. Along with the entire body of Mandate legislation, they were incorporated into Israel's domestic legislation after the state's establishment in 1948, except for provisions explicitly annulled. They remain in force today with many amendments.

The regulations as amended form an important part of the legal system in the West Bank. They permit the establishment of military tribunals to try civilians, prohibitions on the publication of books and newspapers, house demolitions, indefinite administrative detention, extensive powers of search and seizure, the sealing off of territories and the imposition of curfews.

In the midst of the Arab revolt, the British government passed the "Palestine (Defence) Order in Council, 1937", authorizing the British High Commissioner in Palestine to enact such regulations "as appear to him in his unfettered discretion to be necessary or expedient for securing public safety, the defence of Palestine, the maintenance of public order and the suppression of mutiny, rebellion, and riot and for maintaining supplies and services essential to the life of the community." In 1945, such regulations as had been introduced, and many others, were declared as the "Defence (Emergency) Regulations, 1945". They consisted of 147 regulations occupying forty-one pages of the Palestine Gazette. Professor Alan Dowty writes that the Regulations reflected the preoccupations of a colonial power facing widespread unrest and the threat of war, and effectively established a regime of martial law.

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