Authority without Sovereignty: The Case of the National Center of The Jewish Community in Palestine

The pre-independence Jewish community in Palestine has often been called ‘a state in the making’ or ‘a state within a state’. Despite its being a minority community within a wider political system, the Jewish community, or the Yishuv1 as it was called, developed political institutions which enjoyed a large degree of authority, as well as mechanisms for the settlement of political conflicts which resembled those of a sovereign state.2