ERETZ-ISRAEL
[(Hebrew)—the Land of Israel, Palestine] was the birth place 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 through
out 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 home land. 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
reaffirmed in the Man date 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 homeless ness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the
Jewish State, which would open the gates of the home land 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 dig nity, freedom and honest toil in their national home land.
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 inhabit ants; 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 safe
guard 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 up-building 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 pre pared to do its share in a
common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
WE APPEAL to the
Jewish people through out the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel
in the tasks of immigration and up-building 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 “ROCK OF ISRAEL”, WE AFFIX OUR SIGNATURES TO THIS PROCLAMATION AT
THIS SESSION OF THE PROVISIONAL COUNCIL OF STATE, ON THE SOIL OF THE
HOME LAND, IN THE CITY OF TEL-AVIV, ON THIS SABBATH EVE, THE 5TH DAY OF
IYAR, 5708 (14TH MAY,1948).
________________
Signed by David Ben-Gurion and thirty-six others.
Source:
Israel Ministry
of Foreign Affairs web site.* |