How Israel’s Declaration of Independence Became Its Constitution

This is the final installment in Martin Kramer’s series on how Israel’s declaration of independence came about, and what the text reveals about the country it brought into being. Six previous installments can be seen here.—The Editors

Israel’s declaration of independence was publicly read out by David Ben-Gurion late in the afternoon of May 14, 1948, a Friday. Its last, operative section promised that independence would be followed by a “constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948.”

In the hours before the ceremony, various members of the People’s Council—the temporary legislative body in whose name the state’s establishment was proclaimed—objected to certain formulas in the document. Ben-Gurion (as I noted in an earlier installment of this series) downplayed the document’s significance and reassured the objectors in these words: “We’re declaring independence, nothing more. This isn’t a constitution. As for the constitution, we will have a session on Sunday, when we will deal with it.”