Everything about Declaration Of Independence Israel totally explained
The
Israeli Declaration of Independence (
Hakhrazat HaAtzma'ut or
Megilat HaAtzma'ut), made on
14 May 1948 (
5 Iyar,
5708), the day the
British Mandate expired, was the official announcement that the new
Jewish state named the
State of Israel had been formally established in parts of what was known as the
British Mandate for Palestine and on land where, in antiquity, the Kingdoms of
Israel,
Judah and
Judea had once been.
It has been called the start of the "Third Jewish Commonwealth" by some observers. The "First Jewish Commonwealth" ended with the destruction of
Solomon's Temple in 586 BCE, the second with the destruction of the
Second Temple in 70 CE, and the crushing of
Bar Kokhba's revolt by the
Roman Empire in the year 135.
In Israel the event is celebrated annually with the
national holiday Yom Ha'atzmaut (lit.
Independence Day), the timing of which is based on the
Hebrew calendar date of the declaration (
5, Iyar,
5708).
Palestinians commemorate the event as
Nakba Day (
Yawm al-nakba, lit.
Catastrophe Day) on
15 May every year.
Background
Whilst the possibility of a
Jewish homeland in
Palestine had been a goal of
Zionist organisations since the late 19th century, it wasn't until 1917 and the
Balfour declaration that the idea gained the official backing of a major power. The declaration stated that the
British government supported the creation of a
national home for the Jewish people in
Palestine. In 1936 the
Peel Commission suggested partitioning Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, though it was rejected as unworkable by the government and was at least partially to blame for the
1936-39 Arab revolt.
In the face of increasing violence, the British handed the issue over to the
United Nations. The result was
Resolution 181, a partition plan to divide Palestine between Jews and Arabs. The Jewish state was to receive around 56% of the land area of Mandate Palestine, encompassing 82% of the Jewish population, though it would be separated from Jerusalem, designated as an area to be administered by the UN. The plan was accepted by most of the Jewish population, but rejected by much of the Arab populace. On 29 November 1947, the plan was put to a vote in the
United Nations General Assembly. The result was 33 to 13 in favour of the plan, with 10 abstentions. The Arab countries (all of which had opposed the plan) proposed to query the
International Court of Justice on the competence of the General Assembly to partition a country against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants, but were again defeated. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal from the territory (15 May 1948), though the UK refused to implement the plan, arguing it was unacceptable to both sides.
Drafting the text
The declaration was first drafted by
Zvi Berenson, the
Histadrut trade union's legal advisor and later a justice of the
Supreme Court, at the request of
Pinchas Rosen. A revised second draft was made by three lawyers, A. Beham, A. Hintzheimer and Z.E. Baker, and was framed by a committee including
David Remez,
Pinchas Rosen,
Haim-Moshe Shapira,
Moshe Sharett and
Aharon Zisling. which was approved in a meeting of
Moetzet HaAm at the
JNF building in
Tel Aviv on 14 May, starting at 1:50. It ended at 15:00, an hour before the declaration was due to be made, and despite ongoing disagreements, with a unanimous vote in favour of the final text.
During the process, there were two major debates, centring around the issues of borders and religion. On the border issue, the original draft had declared that the borders would be that decided by the UN partition plan. Whilst this was supported by Rosen and
Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit, it was opposed by Ben-Gurion and Zisling, with Ben-Gurion stating, "We accepted the UN Resolution, but the Arabs did not. They are preparing to make war on us. If we defeat them and capture western Galilee or territory on both sides of the road to Jerusalem, these areas will become part of the state. Why should we obligate ourselves to accept boundaries that in any case the Arabs dont accept?" Its inclusion in the text was dropped after
Minhelet HaAm voted 5-4 against it. Ben-Gurion put forward "Israel", which was passed by a vote of 6-3.
Vote
On 12 May the
Minhelet HaAm was convened to vote on declaring independence. Three of the members were missing;
Yehuda Leib Maimon and
Yitzhak Gruenbaum were stuck in
besieged Jerusalem, whilst
Yitzhak-Meir Levin was in the
United States.
The meeting started at 1:45 and ended after midnight. The decision was between accepting the American proposal for a truce, or declaring independence. The latter option was put to a vote, with six of the ten members present supporting it:
Chaim Weizmann, chairman of the
World Zionist Organization and soon to be the first
President of Israel, endorsed the decision, after reportedly asking "What are they waiting for, the idiots?" On the wall behind the podium hung a picture of
Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, and two flags, later to become the official
flag of Israel.
After telling the audience "I shall now read to you the scroll of the Establishment of the State, which has passed its first reading by the National Council", Ben-Gurion proceeded to read out the declaration, taking 16 minutes, ending with the words "Let us accept the Foundation Scroll of the Jewish State by rising" and calling on Rabbi
Fishman to recite the
Shehecheyanu blessing.
After
Moshe Shertok, the last of the signatories, had put his name to paper, the audience again stood and sung Hatikvah, accompanied by the
Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra. Ben-Gurion concluded the event with the words "The State of Israel is established. This meeting is adjourned."
Aftermath
Eleven minutes after the Declaration of Independence was signed the
United States formally recognised the State of Israel, followed by
Iran (which had voted against the UN partition plan),
Guatemala,
Iceland,
Nicaragua,
Romania and
Uruguay. The
Soviet Union recognised Israel on 17 May 1948, followed by
Poland,
Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia,
Ireland and
South Africa.
The declaration was followed by an invasion of the new state by troops from
Egypt,
Iraq,
Lebanon and
Syria, starting the
1948 Arab-Israeli War, known in Israel as the War of Independence (
Milhamat HaAtzma'ut). Although a truce began on 11 June, fighting resumed on 8 July and stopped again on 18 July, before restarting in mid-October and finally ending on 24 July 1949 with the signing of the
armistice agreement with Syria. By then Israel had retained its independence and increased its land area by almost 50% compared to the partition plan.
Following independence, Moetzet HaAm was transformed into the
Provisional State Council, which acted as the legislative body for the new state until the
first elections in January 1949.
Many of the signatories went on to play a prominent role in
Israeli politics following independence; Moshe Sharett and Golda Meir both served as
Prime Minister,
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi became the country's second
president in 1952, and several others served as
ministers.
David Remez was the first signatory to pass away, dying in May 1951, whilst Meir Vilner, the youngest signatory at just 29, was the longest living, serving in the
Knesset until 1990 and dying in June 2003.
Eliyahu Berligne, the oldest signatory at 82, died in 1959.
The scroll
Although Ben-Gurion had told the audience that he was reading from the scroll of independence, he was actually reading from handwritten notes; by the time of the declaration, only the bottom part of the scroll had been finished by artist and calligrapher
Otte Wallish (he didn't complete the entire document until June).
The scroll, which is in three parts bound together, is now kept in the country's National Archives.
Context and content
The document commences by drawing a direct line from
Biblical times to the present:
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. |
It acknowledges the Jewish exile over the millennia, mentioning both ancient "faith" and new "politics":
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. |
It speaks of the urge of Jews to return to their ancient homeland:
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. |
It describes
Jewish immigrants to Israel in the following terms:
Pioneers… 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 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 what it claimed to be its own country. This right was supported by the British government in the [[Balfour Declaration of 1917 |
The European
Holocaust of 1939–45 is part of the imperative for the re-settlement of the homeland:
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 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 [[Nazism |
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Israel, requiring the inhabitants of 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.
On the issues of
sovereignty and
self-determination:
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.
Thus members and representatives of the Jews of Palestine and of the [[Zionism
|
The new state pledged that it'll take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz Israel and appealed:
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. |
A final appeal is made to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the "Free Hebrew people in its land" in the tasks of
immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the struggle for the realization of their age-old dream, the redemption of Israel. The Declaration is making a distinction between the "Hebrew" people in "the Land of Israel", and "the Jewish people" in the rest of the world.
It concludes with the phrase "MiToch Bitachon B'Tzur Yisrael" which roughly translates to "With faith in the God of Israel," or alternatively "From the strength of Israel." This double meaning ended the document in a manner satisfactory to both the religious and secularist factions of the Yishuv.
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