The state of exception has remained a vague and undiscovered area in public law and is often associated with the ‘state of emergency’ and the ‘state of necessity’ two tools that can be used to create the state of exception. These two, often constitutionally guaranteed tools, are often used to by a president to obtain exclusive powers for a limited duration in certain specific circumstances. Prior the Arab Spring most Arab states were in a permanent state of exception due to the power of the sovereign had to extend and define these particular conditions to their own ends, echoing somewhat Schmit’s emphasis on the sovereign during the state of exception.
Unfortunately, Palestine is no different to this tendency towards centralization of powers in the Middle East. Thus, this paper intends to explore the nature of the current symbiotic relationship between Palestine’s political reality and its semi-presidential political system that has led to its current extended condition that can be referred to as the state of exception. Using a mix of constitutional theory and political science this paper therefore asks: What are the right constitutional measures to be used during the state of exception?