Thursday, November 11, 2010

Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel (May 14, 1948)

Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel
(May 14, 1948)
ERETZ ISRAEL* 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† 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.
* The Land of Israel.
† Immigrants coming to Eretz-Israel in defiance of restrictive legislation.
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 fullyprivileged
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 wick-
edness 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 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).
Source: Independence Documents of the World, ed. Albert P. Blaustein, Jay Sigler,
and Benjamin R. Beede, 2 vols. (New York, 1977), I, 371.