Homeland for the Jewish people
A homeland for the Jewish people is an idea rooted in Jewish history, religion, and culture. The Jewish aspiration to return to Zion, generally associated with divine redemption, has suffused Jewish religious thought since the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile.[1]
For the ongoing debate as to the nature of the State of Israel, see Jewish state.Founding of the State of Israel
The State of Israel was finally established on 14 May 1948 with the Israeli Declaration of Independence.[20] Legal dominion in the collective political rights to self-determination vested in the Jewish People, the trust beneficiary, partly in 1948 and partly in 1967.
The concept of a national homeland for the Jewish people in the British Mandate of Palestine was enshrined in Israeli national policy and reflected in many of Israel's public and national institutions. The concept was expressed in the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948 and given concrete expression in the Law of Return, passed by the Knesset on 5 July 1950, which declared: "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh."[21] This was extended in 1970 to include non-Jews with a Jewish grandparent, and their spouses. These declarations were widely condemned and considered racist by Palestinians.
While nowadays the concept of a Jewish homeland almost always means the State of Israel under some variation of its current borders, there have been many other proposals for a Jewish state over the course of Jewish history. While some of those have come into existence, others never came to be implemented.