The State of Israel started Monday night to mark its 66th birthday, with Yom Haatzmaut, the official Independence Day ceremony kicking off the festivities.
A ceremony is held every year at the Mount Herzl national cemetery in Jerusalem.
The heart of the ceremony is the lighting of 12 beacons, one for each of the tribes of Israel. Every year a dozen Israelis are selected for this honor by a special committee.
This year, for the first time, all the torch-lighters were women.
On May 14, 1948, on the day in which the British Mandate over Palestine expired, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum on Rothschild Boulevard, and approved a proclamation, declaring the establishment of the State of Israel. The new state was recognized that night by the United States and three days later by the USSR.
The Declaration of Independence was read by David Ben-Gurion, who will later become the first Prime Minister.
As the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, he declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel
That day, the members of the People's Council proclaimed the establishment of the state.
The proclamation is divided into four sections: the section that describes the history of the Jewish people, its struggle to renew its political life and the international recognition of this right; the operative section, that proclaims the establishment of the state; the section that declares the principles which will guide the State of Israel; and the appeal to the U.N., the Arab inhabitants of the state, the Arab states and world Jewry.
Even though the proclamation is neither a law nor an ordinary legal document, it has legal validity, and its first and third sections were made use of by the Supreme Court for the purpose of normative interpretation.
The second section is the primary source of authority in the Israeli legal system.
Some were inclined to view the Proclamation of Independence, and especially its declaratory section, as a Constitution, but the Supreme Court stated, in a series of decisions, that the proclamation does not have constitutional validity, and that it is not a supreme law which may be used to invalidate laws and regulations that contradict it.