Summary
The 1931 Palestine (Amendment) Citizenship Order-in-Council, ratified in July 1931, which in Banko’s account had a very limited effect: it incorporated ‘treaty nationality’ for Palestinians resident abroad between 1924 and 1925 only, and did not reflect the demands of the emigrants and their lobbyists (The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, PDF p.121 / printed p.110, PDF p.147 / printed p.136).
Details
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Amendment was discussed seriously from 1929, after that summer’s violence and because of unresolved questions of acquisition and revocation for both Arabs and Jews; Colonial Office Legal Advisor J. S. Risley proposed adding to Article 1 of the 1925 Order a clause allowing ‘treaty nationality’ — a declaration of retention by former Ottoman subjects habitually resident on 6 August 1924 who left before 1 August 1925 and returned anytime after without another nationality — which would not have affected the vast majority of emigrants who left before August 1924 (PDF p.144-145 / printed p.133-134).
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Norman Bentwich proposed instead that anyone who left Palestine during 1924 or 1925 and returned within five years be regarded as a habitual resident under Article 1, to ‘be treated as Palestinians as of right and not by naturalisation’; the Foreign Office countered with four years rather than five (PDF p.146 / printed p.135).
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In 1929 the Foreign Secretary held the entire 1925 Order should be amended rather than patched article by article, the Colonial Office agreeing in 1930; drafting immediately produced Foreign and Home Office differences, including over a provision giving high commissioners power to revoke citizenship from natives who returned after 1924 and from Jews who arrived from 1918 to 1925 (PDF p.146-147 / printed p.135-136).
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As ratified in July 1931, the amended order incorporated treaty nationality and gave four years from the date of issue for native-born Palestinians to claim citizenship; Ottoman subjects habitually resident before 1 August 1925 received ipso facto Palestinian citizenship unless they had acquired another nationality prior to the amendment, while the Home Office reaffirmed that those resident abroad must maintain a substantial connection — periodic visits were not enough (PDF p.147 / printed p.136).
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It gave the Jerusalem administration a significant measure of autonomy: explicit power for the high commissioner to revoke or annul a certificate of naturalisation for any reason deemed legitimate (PDF p.147 / printed p.136).
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In sum, Banko states, it did not radically alter the original order nor allow a significant number of Palestinian Arab emigrants to return as citizens; only Arabs who left in the year between the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne and the issue of the 1925 Order qualified (PDF p.147 / printed p.136).
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By virtue of the amended order, revocation was threatened more frequently after 1930 against Jewish citizens resident outside Palestine, some placed by the authorities in the category of ‘undesirable persons’; three years after its issue, Dominions Office member K. O. Roberts-Wray stated it an ‘indisputable fact’ that the legislation was never intended to deny any Palestinian Jew of his citizenship (PDF p.148-149 / printed p.137-138).
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Banko’s Chapter 5 conclusion on the amended order in practice: Jewish citizens resident abroad for three or more years received (often multiple) warning letters offering them the chance to refute loss of connection, and justifications of being too poor or ill to return resulted in leniency and passport renewals, while an estimated 30,000 Palestinian Arab emigrants and their children remained without citizenship by the mid-1930s (The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, PDF p.150-151 / printed p.139-140, PDF p.155 / printed p.144).
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Banko: in sum by 1931 the changes to the 1925 order did not grant greater civic, political or social rights as requested by Arab nationalists — they simply affected a legal realm (PDF p.157 / printed p.146).
Related pages
The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, Palestine Citizenship Order-in-Council 1925, Palestinian Arab diaspora, Committee for the Defence of Arab Emigrant Rights to Palestinian Citizenship, Norman Bentwich