November 2021
How Israel’s Declaration of Independence Became Its Constitution
Israel's founders made little of the declaration at the time. It took decades of work by figures of widely different political stripes to make it the towering document it is today.
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.”
![On the 30th Anniverssary of the declaration of the Independence of Israel by the late David Ben Gurion, PM Menahem Begin announcing the declaration in a spectacular perfomance similar to the original. Photo shows: People listening to the announcment of the Independence Declaration by Menahem Begin.
1978/05/14 Copyright © IPPA 11018-000-33
Photo by [010] Hadani Dan](https://www.datocms-assets.com/128928/1744839656-begin1978-scaled.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&dpr=4&fit=crop&h=397&w=596 "Prime Minister Menachem Begin (on dais) at a reenactment of the declaration ceremony at Independence Hall on May 11, 1978. *Dan Hadani Collection, Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, National Library of Israel*.")