1948 CE
Israel Declaration Of Independence
About this moment
The Israeli Declaration of Independence, formally the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel (Hebrew: הכרזה על הקמת מדינת ישראל), was proclaimed at the Tel Aviv Museum on 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar 5708), at the end of the civil war phase and beginning of the Arab–Israeli War of the 1948 Palestine war, by the Va'ad Leumi led by David Ben-Gurion, the executive head of the World Zionist Organization and chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. It declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine (or the Land of Israel in the Jewish tradition), to be known as the State of Israel, which would come into effect on termination of the British Mandate at midnight that day. While celebrated in Israel as Independence Day, a national holiday on 5 Iyar of every year according to the Hebrew calendar, Palestinians view the day as the start of Nakba, or "catastrophe", marking the mass displacements of Palestinians and the loss of homes and lands, and commemorate it annually on 15 May as Nakba Day.