Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual identity was forged, religious and national. 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 for the restoration of political freedom.

Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every generation re-established in their ancestral homeland. In recent decades they returned en masse. Pioneers, and advocates maapilim made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a vibrant society, which controlled its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all inhabitants of the country, which aspires to independence and sovereignty.

In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, gathered the First Zionist Congress proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country.

This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 and affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations, international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz Israel and the Jewish people's right to rebuild their home National.

The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the slaughter 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 doors of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of privileged member in the family 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, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland .

During the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of freedom-loving nations and peace 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 29 November 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel. The General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take in their hands all necessary steps to implement that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations on 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 TOWN COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY of Eretz Israel and 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 IN THE ASSEMBLY RESOLUTION GENERAS UNITED NATIONS, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE in Eretz Israel, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

DECLARE that from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (May 14, 1948), until the establishment of permanent and elected officials of the state, according to the constitution that will be adopted by the Constituent Assembly to be elected no later than October 1, 1948, the People's Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State and its executive, the administration of the People, will be the Interim Government of Jewish state, to be called "Israel".

STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and the ingathering of the exiles; promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants will be based on the principles of freedom, justice and peace, in light of the teachings of the prophets of Israel will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture, safeguard the Holy Places of all religions, and will faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with agencies and United Nations representatives in the implementation of General Assembly resolution of 29 November 1947 and take necessary measures to achieve economic union of the whole of Eretz Israel.

WE APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in building their state and receive the State of Israel into the family of nations.

APPEAL - in the 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 building the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in their land. The State of Israel is ready to do its share in the 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 and backed him in the tasks of immigration and construction, and are together 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 FIFTH DAY OF IYAR, 5708 ( MAY 14, 1948).