ABSTRACT
The Declaration on the Establishment of the State of Israel of 14 May, 1948 contains several statements that are central in analyzing the legal status of Israel’s Arab minority. The status of the Arabs within the Jewish state concerned Zionist thinkers and politicians long before the declaration of Israel’s independence. A number of factors were obviously dominant in shaping the initial relationship of the institutions of the newly independent State of Israel towards the Arab minority that remained within its borders. In spite of their particularistic perspective, the political elite were committed to turning Israel into a modern democracy. The abolition of military government took place only a year before the Six Day War in 1967, during the course of which Israel took control over the whole area of Palestine that was, according to the UN Partition resolution, to have been partitioned into a Jewish and an Arab state.
