THE
DECLARATION OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL
May 14, 1948
On May 14, 1948, on the day in which the British Mandate over a Palestine expired,
the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, and approved the
following proclamation, declaring the establishment of the State of Israel. The
new state was recognized that night by the United States and three days later
by the USSR.
Text:
ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew)
- the Land of Israel, Palestine] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here
their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first
attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance
and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books. After
being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout
their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and
for the restoration in it of their political freedom. Impelled
by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation
to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned
in their masses. Pioneers, ma'pilim [(Hebrew) - immigrants coming to Eretz-Israel
in defiance of restrictive legislation] and defenders, they made deserts bloom,
revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving
community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how
to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's inhabitants,
and aspiring towards independent nationhood. In
the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State,
Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of
the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country. This
right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and
re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave
international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and
Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home. The
catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions
of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving
the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish
State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer
upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of
nations. Survivors of the
Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued
to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers,
and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest
toil in their national homeland. In
the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full
share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces
of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained
the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations. On
the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution
calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly
required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary
on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the
United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable. This
right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate,
like all other nations, in their own sovereign State. ACCORDINGLY
WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE'S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF
ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE
TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL
AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL,
TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL. WE
DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being
tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), until the establishment
of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution
which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the
1st October 1948, the People's Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State,
and its executive organ, the People's Administration, shall be the Provisional
Government of the Jewish State, to be called "Israel". THE
STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of
the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all
its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by
the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political
rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee
freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard
the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of
the Charter of the United Nations. THE
STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives
of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of
the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the economic union
of the whole of Eretz-Israel. WE
APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building-up of
its State and to receive the State of Israel into the comity of nations. WE
APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months
- to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate
in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and
due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions. WE
EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace
and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation
and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The
State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement
of the entire Middle East. WE
APPEAL to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of
Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in
the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream - the redemption of
Israel. PLACING OUR TRUST
IN THE ALMIGHTY, WE AFFIX OUR SIGNATURES TO THIS PROCLAMATION AT THIS SESSION
OF THE PROVISIONAL COUNCIL OF STATE, ON THE SOIL OF THE HOMELAND, IN THE CITY
OF TEL-AVIV, ON THIS SABBATH EVE, THE 5TH DAY OF IYAR, 5708 (14TH MAY,1948).
David Ben-Gurion
Daniel
Auster
Mordekhai Bentov
Yitzchak Ben Zvi
Eliyahu Berligne
Fritz
Bernstein
Rabbi Wolf Gold
Meir Grabovsky
Yitzchak Gruenbaum
Dr.
Abraham Granovsky
Eliyahu Dobkin
Meir Wilner-Kovner
Zerach Wahrhaftig
Herzl Vardi Rachel Cohen
Rabbi Kalman Kahana
Saadia Kobashi
Rabbi
Yitzchak Meir Levin
Meir David Loewenstein
Zvi Luria
Golda Myerson
Nachum Nir
Zvi Segal
Rabbi Yehuda Leib Hacohen Fishman
David Zvi Pinkas
Aharon Zisling
Moshe Kolodny
Eliezer Kaplan
Abraham Katznelson
Felix Rosenblueth
David Remez
Berl Repetur
Mordekhai Shattner
Ben Zion Sternberg
Bekhor Shitreet
Moshe Shapira
Moshe Shertok
* Published in the
Official Gazette, No. 1 of the 5th, Iyar, 5708 (14th May, 1948).
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