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Section 2 The proclamation of the State of Israel had no basis under international law The British mandate over Palestine ended on 15 May 1948. On the eve of that day the State of Israel was proclaimed. In its operative part, the Proclamation of the State of Israel declared the following: "Accordingly we, the members of the National Council, representing the Jewish people in Palestine and the World Zionist Movement, are met together in solemn assembly today, the day of termination of the British Mandate for Palestine; and by virtue of the natural and historic right of the Jewish people and of the Resolu- tion of the General Assembly of the United Nations, We hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called Medinath Yisrael (The State of Israel)." Two questions here arise: the competence or legal capacity of the parties that made the Proclamation, and the validity of the grounds on which the Proclama- tion was based. Let us first consider the competence of the parties. The Proclamation was made by "the members of the National Council, representing the Jewish people in Palestine and the World Zionist Movement." At the time of the Proclamation, "the Jewish people in Palestine" were in their majority alien immigrants. Only one-tenth of them were indigenous inhabitants of the country. The bulk of the Jews who on 14 May 1948 proclaimed the State of Israel and seized a large area of Palestine were foreign immigrants, some of whom had been admitted by the mandatory Power as "legal immigrants" while others had come in illegally,² and who in all cases had entered the country against the will of its original inhabitants.³ The majority of the indigenous Jews who lived in Palestine in 2 The Palestine Government estimated the number of Jewish illegal immigrants in 1945 to have been between 50,000 and 60,000: Government of Palestine, A Survey of Palestine, Vol. I, p. 210. 3 Most of Israel's political leaders, past and present, have come from Russia, Poland,
