British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 129

CHAPTER V.
institutions as the people possess”. A committee was therefore appointed in 1940 to consider and to recommend what steps should be taken to ensure the exercise of a proper measure of village responsibility. This committee recommended in their report" that, in addition to the Local Councils Ordinance, there should be separate legislation of greater flexibility more suitable of application to the more backward of the rural communities. This led to the enactment in 1944 of the Village Administration Ordinance. A. number of village councils have been set up under this Ordinance during 1945, but it is as yet too early to judge of its suitability for the purpose intended.

4. Thus, the functions of local government are today exercised by municipal councils, local councils and village councils under the authority contained in the Municipal Corporations Ordinance, 1934 ** , the Local Councils Ordinance, 1941 ***, and the Village Administration Ordinance, 1944 , respectively. Generally speaking the municipal councils are established in the intensively urban areas, the local councils in the smaller townships where development is not of a predominantly urban nature and the village councils in areas which are exclusively rural. Owing to historical circumstances, however, a number of the Arab local authorities have the status of municipal council although in size and degree of development they are inferior to several of the larger Jewish local councils; similarly, a number of the Arab local councils which were established before the enactment of the Village Administration Ordinance are comparable in size and nature to those villages in which village councils have recently been created.

5. The present number of local authorities within each category and their racial composition are as shown below :-

Arab Jewish Mixed Total
-~ --
Municipal councils 18 2 4 24
Local councils II 26 111 SB
Village councils 24 - 24
Totals 53 28 5 86
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* Report of the Committee on Village Administration and Responsibility, 1941 .
** Laws of 1934, Vol. I. p. L, as amended by fourteen amending Ordinances.
*** Laws of 1941, Vol. I, p. 144 as amended in 1942 and 1944.
Laws of 1944, Vol. I, p.49
The Templar community of Sarona.

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