Why does Israel not have a written constitution?

The 1948 Mandate and the Disagreements of 1949

Israel's Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, explicitly stated that an elected Constituent Assembly would draft a formal constitution by October 1, 1948. The ongoing War of Independence delayed national elections until January 1949. When the elected body convened, it transformed itself into the First Knesset, but its members faced a fundamental debate over whether to complete and ratify such a charter.

The primary obstacle was a profound ideological divide. Religious parties, such as the United Religious Front, argued that the Jewish people already possessed an eternal constitution in the Torah, warning that any secular legal document would subordinate divine law to human authority. Conversely, secular lawmakers desired a liberal democratic constitution with an entrenched bill of rights to safeguard individual freedoms.

Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion also opposed an immediate, rigid constitution. He argued that a young nation absorbing hundreds of thousands of immigrants should not bind future generations before the majority of the world's Jewish population had arrived. Ben-Gurion also favored executive flexibility to govern during wartime and nation-building.

The Harari Compromise of June 1950

Faced with an ideological stalemate, Knesset Member Yizhar Harari of the Progressive Party proposed an evolutionary solution. On June 13, 1950, the Knesset adopted the Harari Resolution by a vote of 50 to 38. The resolution directed the Knesset's Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee to prepare the constitution chapter by chapter, with each section enacted as an independent Basic Law.

Under this compromise, once the Knesset completes all the individual chapters, they are intended to be combined into a complete, formal constitution. The first chapter, Basic Law: The Knesset, was passed eight years later in 1958. Over subsequent decades, the Knesset enacted additional Basic Laws defining the presidency, the government, the military, and state lands.

The Constitutional Revolution and Lingering Questions

For decades, the Basic Laws functioned much like regular statutes because the Knesset could amend most of them with a simple majority. That changed in 1992, when the Knesset passed two human rights measures: Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation. In the 1995 United Mizrahi Bank ruling, the Supreme Court, led by President Aharon Barak, held that these Basic Laws possessed superior constitutional status, granting courts the power to strike down ordinary legislation that conflicted with them.

Because Israel still lacks a single, codified constitution with an agreed amendment procedure, the balance of power between the Knesset and the Supreme Court remains one of the most contested political questions in Israeli society today.