ABSTRACT
From 'state within a State' to State
David Vital
This article examines the transition of the Jewish community of Palestine, the Yishuv, from a communal grouping under British mandatory rule to the State of Israel in 1948. It asks how this transformation was achieved and maintained with surprisingly few setbacks, in the face of general scepticism, war and the crisis within the Jewish world still shaken by the Holocaust. In doing so it addresses the historic relationship of Diaspora Jewry to its communal institutions and leadership and places the development of representative institutions first within the Zionist movement and then the Yishuv into this framework.
