מעבדת אדם חברה סביבה

Collective punishment policy in Mandatory Palestine evolved through two distinct phases, shaped by the social and political environments in which it was applied. Drawing on archival correspondence, administrative reports, and Mandatory legislation, this article argues that a legal instrument initially justified through interpretations of local custom and practice was progressively detached from those conditions, and that this detachment shaped both its expansion and its eventual failure as an instrument of governance. In its initial phase, collective punishment functioned as an administrative strategy adapted to rural and tribal social structures, particularly among Bedouin communities whose social organisation rested on collective responsibility and customary law. British officials treated collective responsibility as a more workable basis for governing these environments than individual-based criminal law, introducing measures that incorporated local and Ottoman practices of shared responsibility. Collective sanctions operated within a framework of legal pluralism, linking imperial legal authority with existing forms of communal accountability and facilitating administrative reach in areas where direct imperial presence was limited. From the mid-1920s onward, the rationale and application of these measures shifted. As Arab national mobilisation expanded and unrest intensified, the administration transferred collective punishment from its earlier tribal and rural setting into wider political arenas. By the late 1930s, collective sanctions had become a central instrument of emergency rule directed at an organised urban-national political struggle. This trajectory reveals how the alignment between legal instrument and social context eroded as collective punishment moved beyond the settings that had originally sustained its authority. The Palestine case clarifies a broader dynamic of imperial legal adaptation: measures that stabilised rule when aligned with local structures became increasingly fragile when transferred to political settings governed by different legal expectations and forms of collective mobilisation.