When the state was declared and the provisional government established, the various departments of the Vaad Leumi (Jewish Agency) transitioned into the initial government ministries. In July 1948, the government set an election date of January 25, 1949.

It was decided to retain the proportional party list system used by the World Zionist Organization and the elections to the Zionist Congress. Twenty-one party lists competed for 120 seats in the new Israeli parliament, with 440,000 people casting their votes in Israel’s first election. This represented 87 percent of the eligible voters. The Labor Party secured 57 seats, the center-right parties obtained 31, and the religious parties won 16.

The first Constituent Assembly convened on February 14, 1949. Two days later, the first significant piece of legislation, the Transition Law, was enacted, which also came to be known as the Small Constitution. This law laid down the basic structure of government, establishing the parliament, the courts, and other fundamental governmental functions.

Weizmann then tasked Ben-Gurion with forming a new government. It took three weeks for Ben-Gurion to negotiate a coalition, and on March 10th, the new government was ratified by a vote of 73 to 45. The first Knesset was intended to serve as a constitutional convention to draft Israel’s constitution. Dr. Leo Kohn, the legal advisor to the Jewish Agency, had spent months preparing the draft constitution.

Although there were initial plans to draft a constitution, Ben-Gurion and the Mapai leadership ultimately decided to abandon both the constitution and even the notion of drafting one at that time. Ben-Gurion believed that developing a constitution required more time and that the country, preoccupied with absorbing immigrants and defending itself, could not afford the divisive debates, especially over religion, that a constitution would provoke. The decision was made to gradually create a constitution by passing special laws over time. However, this approach has not proven particularly successful.