Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel

The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was proclaimed in Tel Aviv by David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, on the day before the British Mandate for Palestine was due to expire. It followed the United Nations General Assembly's 1947 plan to partition the territory into Jewish and Arab states, which Jewish leaders accepted and Arab leaders rejected. The declaration set out the historical and legal basis for the state and promised equal rights to all inhabitants. Within hours the United States recognized the new state, followed by the Soviet Union, and the neighbouring Arab states sent their armies in, starting the first Arab-Israeli war. For Palestinians, the same events are remembered as the Nakba, or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands fled or were expelled.

Open on the timeline