Establishment of the State of Israel

Israeli Declaration of Independence
Location	Tel Aviv
Author(s)	First Draft: Zvi Berenson Second Draft: Moshe Shertok David Remez Felix Rosenblueth Moshe Shapira Aharon Zisling Third Draft: David Ben-Gurion Yehuda Leib Fishman Aharon Zisling Moshe Shertok
Signatories	David Ben-Gurion Daniel Auster Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Mordechai Bentov Eliyahu Berligne Fritz Bernstein Rachel Cohen-Kagan Eliyahu Dobkin Yehuda Leib Fishman Wolf Gold Meir Grabovsky Avraham Granovsky Yitzhak Gruenbaum Kalman Kahana Eliezer Kaplan Avraham Katznelson Saadia Kobashi Moshe Kolodny Yitzhak-Meir Levin Meir David Loewenstein Zvi Luria Golda Meyerson/Myerson Nahum Nir David-Zvi Pinkas Felix Rosenblueth David Remez Berl Repetur Zvi Segal Mordechai Shatner Ben-Zion Sternberg Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit Haim-Moshe Shapira Moshe Shertok Herzl Vardi Meir Vilner Zerach Warhaftig Aharon Zisling
Purpose	Declare a Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine shortly before the expiration of the British Mandate.

The Israeli Declaration of Independence, formally the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, was proclaimed on 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar 5708) by David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. It declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, which would come into effect on termination of the British Mandate at midnight that day. The event is celebrated annually in Israel with a national holiday Independence Day on 5 Iyar of every year according to the Hebrew calendar.

The possibility of a Jewish homeland in Palestine had been a goal of Zionist organizations since the late 19th century. The British Foreign Secretary stated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917:

His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

After World War I, the United Kingdom was given a mandate for Palestine, which it had conquered from the Ottomans during the war. In 1937 the Peel Commission suggested partitioning Mandate Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, though the proposal was rejected as unworkable by the government and was at least partially to blame for the renewal of the 1936–39 Arab revolt.

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