Provisional Government of Israel
Official Gazette: Number 1; Tel Aviv, 5 Iyar 5708, 14.5.1948 Page 1
The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel
The Land of 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, defiant returnees, 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 community 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 community 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
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