The prevailing view attributes the origins of the status quo to a letter sent by David Ben-Gurion, as chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, on 19 June 1947, to the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel,[1] in order to form a united policy to present to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), which had commenced its fact-finding tour four days earlier.
The letter was meant to address their concerns that the emerging State of Israel will be a secular one, which might hurt the status of religion and religious institutions, as well as the values of their followers.
suited the Consociationalist form of democracy that exists in Israel, since every ruling provoked a political storm.
Along with the recognition of the Status quo as the regulating arrangement, a political custom has evolved, in which the Ministry of Interior would be held by one of the religious parties represented in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament); the Minister of Interior is principally responsible for citizenship, residency, and identity cards (Teudat Zehut).
This custom is part of the principle of consociationalist democracy that requires governmental rewards to be granted on the basis of each party's relative importance in the eyes of the political players.
[3] The political reality of the founding fathers of the state of Israel was one that emphasized the form of consociational democracy.