Additional information:

Following the 1948 war, areas designated for the Arab state under the UN Partition Plan were occupied by Haganah forces, and later by the #IDF. These areas, termed "occupied territories" from August 1948 onward, were placed under Israeli military rule, impacting their Palestinian inhabitants. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion grappled with how to govern these areas and their residents, questioning their legal status in his diary. In September 1948, Ben-Gurion declared martial law (retroactively effective from May 1948), extending it to additional areas with concentrated Palestinian populations. This encompassed the Galilee and Negev regions, the cities of Ramla, Lod, Ashkelon, and Jaffa, and, after the armistice agreements with Jordan (April 1949), the Triangle area.

While martial law was lifted from mixed cities shortly after the war's end, approximately 85% of Palestine's Arab population—around 125,000 people, most of whom soon received Israeli citizenship—remained under military rule, divided into three administrative zones: North, Central (the Triangle), and South. This military government, drawing authority from the British Mandate's 1945 Defense Emergency Regulations, persisted until December 1966.

Its stated aim was to maintain state security, but its activities focused on controlling territories inhabited by Arabs, abandoned lands and villages, monitoring Arab movements and actions, and preventing their return.

See https://www.collections.akevot.org.il/collections/eng/eng-Military-Rule-1948-1966

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