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Israel's 60th Coming Up
“The State of Israel was declared on the 5th of Iyar,
5708 (May 14, 1948), when Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion stood before
the People's Council - a 37-member body that had been established as an
unofficial provisional legislature and government a month earlier - and read
aloud the new state's Declaration of Independence. Excerpts:
"The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the
Jewish People. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was
shaped. Here they first attained 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 remained faithful to 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...
They made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns,
and created a thriving society 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.
"...This right [of the Jewish people to national
rebirth in its own country] was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of
November 2, 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 the Land of 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...
"On the 29th of November, 1947, the United Nations
General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish
State in the Land of Israel... 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..."
Ben-Gurion then declared the establishment of the State
of Israel, to take effect as of midnight, upon the termination of the British
Mandate. The declaration itself was made
on Friday, several hours before independence actually came into effect, in
order not to clash with the Sabbath.
The People's Council became Israel's Provisional
Government, serving for 10 months until March 10, 1949. It was headed by Prime Minister and Defense
Minister David Ben-Gurion, and was manned by 12 other ministers, including
Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, Health and Aliyah Minister Chaim Moshe Shapira,
and Religions and War Victims Minister Yehuda Leib Maimon.
Though the Declaration mentioned the new state's goal
of absorbing the Ingathering of the Exiles, the ongoing Jewish struggle for the
Redemption of Israel, and "with trust in the Rock of Israel," and
though it appeared to many that centuries of Zionist dreams had now reached
their climax - there were many Jews who were greatly disappointed.
The hareidi-religious public looked askance at the
secular leadership and reigning culture, and did not then see the new State as
part of the Divine plan for Israel's Redemption. Within the religious-Zionist sector, too,
there were those who felt that a State without the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and
without the Biblical areas of Hevron, Shechem, and more was merely a tease;
Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook said he only joined in the general celebrations after
great hesitations.
In addition, there were those who looked at the borders
of the new state, as defined by the UN Partition Resolution several months
before, as totally indefensible. They
delineated three separate sections, with the east-Galilee section touching the
narrow Coastal Plane section at only one point, and the Coastal Plane area
touching the Negev at only one point. Half of the Galilee, all of Judea,
Samaria, Gaza, Halutza and what is now the Jerusalem Corridor and Beit Shemesh
areas were to become Arab.
However, within hours of the Declaration, seven Arab
armies attacked the young Jewish state, and the war ended a year later with
Israel in control of what became known as the pre-1967 borders - including the
Jerusalem Corridor up to but not including the Old City, Halutza, and the
entire Galilee.”
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