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Palestinian nationality

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Summary

The legal nationality attaching to the people of Palestine, formed under the Treaty of Lausanne on August 6, 1924 and codified by the Palestine Citizenship Order of 1925; in Chapter 8 of Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, Susan M. Akram argues it remains valid and legally cognizable today despite Israel’s 1952 denationalization, so that Palestinians are stateless nationals whose Right of Return rests on their rights as nationals of Palestine (Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, PDF p.211, p.214-215, p.228).

Details

  • Nationality in international law rests on “genuine links” — birth on the soil (jus soli), birth to a parent holding the nationality (jus sanguinis) and long-term residence (jus domicilii) — and by the early 1900s excluded race, religion, language or ethnic origin alone as a basis for national status (PDF p.212-213).

  • Palestinian nationality attached to a majority population genuinely linked to a defined territory and passed through blood, residence or birth; the 1925 Order nonetheless narrowed Palestinians abroad’s retention of it while facilitating Jewish immigrant naturalization, against the treaty’s terms (PDF p.215-216).

  • Resolution 181 did not disturb it or create a Jewish nationality, and Resolution 194’s refugee definition was read by the UNCCP and the UN legal advisor (1951) as covering all persons entitled to Palestinian nationality under the 1924 law, and their descendants (PDF p.217-219).

  • Israel’s Nationality Law of 1952 retroactively repealed Palestinian citizenship and left Palestinians who could not meet its residence and registration conditions stateless — an illegal denationalization on Akram’s account, violating the successor-state citizenship principle and the prohibition on arbitrary denationalization (PDF p.219-221).

  • The Palestinian Basic Law leaves the term undefined — Article 7 states only “Palestinian citizenship shall be regulated by law” (PDF p.226) — and the 1995 and 2012 draft citizenship laws that would have defined it, the latter grounded in Lausanne entitlement as of August 6, 1924, were never enacted (PDF p.226-227).

  • Akram’s conclusion: Palestinian nationality is not undermined by Resolution 181, Resolution 194 or Israel’s Nationality Law, and dual nationality is no barrier to return; the general definition is all those who can claim nationality by jus sanguinis and/or jus soli as fixed on August 6, 1924, and all their descendants, who are nationals of Palestine with rights to return, restitution and compensation (PDF p.229-230). Fashioning a nationality law for a two-state scenario must cover, within the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem alone, East Jerusalem inhabitants, refugees expelled since 1948, residents who lost residence since 1925, and Jewish-Palestinian natives who lost residence since 1948, plus the diaspora categories (PDF p.229).

  • Banko’s The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship traces how this nationality was invented before codification: in October 1922 Bentwich’s draft would have given Jewish immigrants ‘provisional nationality’ while Arabs remained ‘former Ottoman subjects’ categorised as ‘ex-enemy aliens’, and the mandate charter’s Article 7 required a nationality law specifically for Jewish immigrants without defining nationality or mentioning the Arab population (The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, PDF p.34-35, p.44 / printed p.23-24, p.33).

  • Banko argues the 1925 Order offered more favourable acquisition to Jewish immigrants than to Arabs from the former Ottoman provinces, Egypt and North Africa, and disadvantaged even Palestinian Arab students and merchants temporarily outside Palestine (PDF p.35 / printed p.24).

  • Palestinian Arab leaders, in Banko’s account, understood nationality as a status granted by birth or descent in a historic community, imbued with inherent rights giving nationals alone ownership of the territorially defined nation-state and its government (PDF p.16-17 / printed p.5-6).

  • Banko’s completion of Chapter 2 gives the codification in detail: residence on the date Lausanne came into force trumped jus sanguinis and jus soli, the 1925 Order’s Article 1 made nearly 730,000 resident Ottoman nationals citizens, and its Article 2 ‘born in Palestine’ wording, against Lausanne Article 34’s ‘native of’, denied ipso facto citizenship to certain descendants abroad and contradicted the jus sanguinis standards of Lausanne, British law, the Ottoman Nationality Law of 1869 and the French mandate laws (The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, PDF p.60-62 / printed p.49-51).

  • Banko’s Chapter 3 gives the Arab understanding against which that codification was read: by 1920 Arab leaders held a Communitarian citizenship in which birth or descent in the Arab community granted rights to the state as its sovereigns, ‘national’ (watanī or qawmī) was equated with ‘native’ (ibn al-balad), and jinsiyya was favoured over muwātana in nationalist writing while ‘citizen’ (muwatin) appeared in petitions (PDF p.68 / printed p.57, PDF p.79-80 / printed p.68-69, PDF p.93 / printed p.82).

  • Banko’s Chapters 6-7: from the late 1920s Arabic-speaking groups articulated a demand for a bundle of civil, political and social rights that went with membership in the nation-state polity of Palestine, the Independence Party (Istiqlal) popularising citizenship as an inseparable political component of national identity; by about 1930 the press published letters signed by ‘citizens of’ (muwatinīn min) rather than ‘nationals of’ (qawmī or watanī min) (The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, PDF p.159-160 / printed p.148-149, PDF p.178 / printed p.167).

  • Banko: the Foreign Office in the early 1930s argued Palestinian citizenship was not the same as Palestinian nationality — ‘do not regard Palestinian citizenship as “nationality”’ — so that, on that view, Palestinian nationality did not exist in a political or ethnic sense, citizenship conferring only a non-political legal subjectivity and a passport (PDF p.154 / printed p.143).

Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, Susan M. Akram, Treaty of Lausanne, Right of Return, Law of Return, Citizenship Law (1952), Self-determination

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