8 February 2012, 12:00 pm
Source I ERETZ-ISRAEL was the birthplace of the Jewish people. 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. In the year 5657 (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 its own country. This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations … 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… Accordingly we hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations. THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel. 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. Extracts from the Declaration of the State of Israel, May 14th 1948 Source K The state of Israel came into being because, in the end, two of the Great Powers, Russia and the United States, for conflicting reasons, strategic and domestic, thought that it would be in their interests. Britain, concerned to maintain its paramountcy in the Middle East, opposed the move. British morale was eroded by a combination of Zionist terrorism, and a feeling that an American President dictated a policy in the interests of Zionism and his re-election, that led to the deaths of British troops. In any case this was the period of the twilight on the British Empire and the replacement of the Pax Britannica with the Pax Americana. After May 15th 1948 the situation in the Middle East was not determined just by Great Power politics, but by a local fights for possession of land. Britain’s imperial position there, established between 1917-23, was eroded. Richard Ovendale, the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Wars, 2004 Source C The Irgun, under Menachim Begin, then decided to blow up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem…Haganah assented initially, but they later withdrew support following an appeal by Chaim Weizmann…Begin then undertook the operation on his own and scheduled it for the middle of the working day. The resulting explosion, on July 22nd, killed 91 British, Jewish and Arab personnel and wounded dozens more…the logic of Zionist terrorism was bearing fruit. That is, the Lehi and Irgun preferred to kill British soldiers rather than officers in order to bring home to the British public at large the cost of maintaining a hold on Palestine. From a Palestinian History book What do you think of these sources??... Read More »
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