Since Israel has no formal constitution, its Declaration of Independence occupies a special place as the nation’s foundational document. In its final form, the declaration was the product of extensive wrangling by various parties with different ideas about what sort of country the Jewish state should be. Jodi Rudoren describes the original version:

If there is to be a resolution to the conflict between the Jewish state and a putative Palestinian one, writes Jonathan Michanie, it won’t start with drawing lines on maps or restrictions on where Jews can build houses, but with the Palestinian Authority (PA) abandoning its official anti-Semitism. The PA can, in this regard, learn much from those Arab nations that have recently made peace with Israel: