This article explores the legal and temporal dimensions of the transition from British Mandate Palestine to the State of Israel on 15 May 1948. I examine the paradoxical character of Israeli jurisdictional claims during this period and argue that it reveals the Israeli state's uncertainty as to whether the Mandate had truly passed into the past. On one hand, Israel recognized the validity of the Mandate administration's jurisdiction until 15 May; I employ the Israeli trial of the British citizen Frederick William Sylvester to demonstrate how Israel even predicated its own jurisdictional claims on their being continuous with those of its predecessor. In this case, the Mandate administration was cast as having entered the realm of the past. Conversely, the Israeli state contested Mandate laws and legal decisions made prior to 15 May to assert its own jurisdictional claims. In the process, Israeli officials belied their efforts to bury their predecessors in the past and implicitly questioned whether the past was in fact behind them. By simultaneously relying upon and disavowing past British legal decisions, the Israeli state staked a claim on being a “completely different political creature” from its British predecessor while retaining its colonial legal structures as the “ultimate standards of reference.” Israel's complex attitude toward its Mandate past directs our attention to how it was created against the backdrop of the receding British Empire and underscores the importance of studying Israel alongside other post-imperial states that emerged from the First World War and the mid-century decolonizing world.

中文翻译：

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法律限制：从英国托管巴勒斯坦到以色列国过渡期间的管辖权要求冲突

本文探讨了 1948 年 5 月 15 日从英国托管巴勒斯坦到以色列国的过渡的法律和时间维度。我研究了这一时期以色列管辖权主张的矛盾特征，并认为它揭示了以色列国家对于委任状真正成为过去。一方面，以色列承认托管当局的管辖权在 5 月 15 日之前有效；我利用以色列对英国公民弗雷德里克·威廉·西尔维斯特 (Frederick William Sylvester) 的审判来展示以色列如何甚至以自己的管辖权主张与其前任的主张相连续为前提。在这种情况下，托管管理被视为进入了过去的领域。反过来，以色列国家对 5 月 15 日之前为主张自己的管辖权主张而制定的授权法和法律决定提出异议。在这个过程中，以色列官员否认他们过去埋葬他们的前任的努力，并含蓄地质疑过去是否真的落后于他们。通过同时依赖和否认英国过去的法律决定，以色列国家声称自己是与其英国前任“完全不同的政治生物”，同时保留其殖民法律结构作为“最终参考标准”。以色列'