Declared on Thursday, April 21, 2011 at 16 Rothschild Blvd. in Tel Aviv, the location where the Israeli Declaration of Independence was made in May, 1948

The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish People, where Jewish identity was shaped. Palestine was the birthplace of the Palestinian People where Palestinian identity was shaped.

On a Friday 63 years ago, Israel’s Declaration of Independence was read here. The declaration promised “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex”. The declaration reached out for peace with all our neighbors. The declaration was based on the UN’s partition plan, which called for the foundation of two states in the land of Israel – a Jewish democratic nation state and an Arab democratic nation state. It is the natural right of the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples “to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State”.

Therefore we are here assembled, on April 21st, 2011, to welcome the coming Declaration of Independence of the Palestinian State, neighboring upon the state of Israel, according to our borders of independence shaped at the end of the War of Independence in 1949 - the borders known today as the 1967 borders.

The independence of both peoples mutually strengthens them. It is both a moral and an existential necessity, and it is the basis for the possibility of good neighborhood. We call upon all the citizens of Israel, the Knesset, the Government, all the citizens of the world and their governments, to recognize the two states, in which the right of the two peoples to self determination is expressed, as well as the general principles of democracy and equality.

We, the undersigned, call upon every peace and freedom seeker and all nations – to welcome the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, to extend a helping hand and encourage the citizens of the two states to maintain peace based on the 1967 borders and other mutually agreed upon arrangements. The complete end of occupation is a fundamental condition for the freedom of both peoples, for the fulfillment of the Israeli Declaration of Independence – and for the independence of the State of Israel.

Among the first signatories: