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Citizenship Studies
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The creation of Palestinian citizenship
under an international mandate:
legislation, discourses and practices,
1918–1925
Lauren Banko
a
a
Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies,
London, UK
Published online: 30 Aug 2012.
To cite this article: Lauren Banko (2012) The creation of Palestinian citizenship under an
international mandate: legislation, discourses and practices, 1918–1925, Citizenship Studies, 16:5-6,
641-655, DOI: 10.1080/13621025.2012.698487
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2012.698487
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Citizenship Studies
Vol. 16, Nos. 5 – 6, August 2012, 641–655
The creation of Palestinian citizenship under an international
mandate: legislation, discourses and practices, 1918 – 1925
Lauren Banko*
Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK
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(Received 16 January 2012; final version received 31 March 2012)
The history of the development of Palestinian nationalism is vast and recent scholarship
continues to focus on the creation of national identities in the modern Middle East.
However, the creation of internationally recognised citizenship of the Arab Middle East
during the era of mandates has not been studied in-depth. In the case of Palestine, the
creation of Palestinian citizenship by the British as a colonial power was a unique yet
delicate process and one which was rejected by the Arabs. The British sought to create
an apolitical citizenship, one without civil or political rights, in order to satisfy both the
mandate terms and the Jewish national home policy. By the time the citizenship was
conferred, the Arab population of Palestine had a detailed counter-discourse to the
British notion of citizenship. The Palestinians viewed their civic identity as imbued
with rights of citizenship, but they saw themselves in terms of having a primordial
nationality by birth. In effect, the certificate of citizenship produced by the British came
out of colonial processes despite the fact that the British were instead meant to be an
international trustee in Palestine. This article presents that process, with reference to
the Palestinian reaction to the legislation of Palestinian mandate citizenship.
Keywords: Palestine mandate; Palestine citizenship; nationality; discourses;
civic identity; citizenship rights
Introduction
The British civil administration began in Palestine in 1920 under High Commissioner
Herbert Samuel with a very clear policy plan for the facilitation of Jewish immigration and
the creation of a national status for Jewish immigrants – but little else was clear in terms of
who possessed sovereignty or how to carry out the proper legislative processes once the
League of Nations ratified the Palestine Mandate. The entire process of inventing a legal
Palestinian citizenship in the crucial early 1920s created an enormous amount of questions
over the status, sovereignty and civil rights of subjects as opposed to nationals or citizens
in a mandated territory. British notions of citizenship were imported into Palestine after
approval by His Majesty’s Government (HMG) in London, and blended with existing
Ottoman-era legislation, Palestinian municipal law and international laws of state
succession and immigration.
At the beginning of the mandate, British officials viewed the Palestinians as citizens in
status only – without a defined set of citizenship rights – influenced by their empire’s own
citizenship legislation, their history of interactions in the ‘Orient’, the perception of
Palestine as divided into three religious communities (rather than civic communities) and
*Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1362-1025 print/ISSN 1469-3593 online
q 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2012.698487
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the Jewish national home policy combined with the ‘sacred trust of civilisation’ that the
Mandate encompassed. In particular, the British came to Palestine with extensive
experience in the governing of ‘oriental races’ in Egypt and India, which had shaped
colonial officials’ perception of subject races. That perception is most clearly reflected in
the style of colonial rule in Palestine by which all legislation came from the King, the
Parliament or the High Commissioners appointed by the King. In Palestine, unlike Egypt
and India, the issue of governing an ‘oriental race’ had to be merged with the obligations
of the mandate in regard to the Jewish immigrants.
The creation of citizenship in the Arab world during the post-First World War period
of international mandates was, therefore, a unique colonial process. In Palestine it was
even more so, and the British needed to create as a citizenship which was as apolitical as
possible. Since the mandate included the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the establishment of
a Jewish national home in Palestine was the driving force for early policy under the British
administration. The mandate required the British to create a law for the acquisition of
Palestinian nationality for the Jews. This nationality would give certain rights and
obligations not only to the Jewish immigrants but also to the majority Arab population
since the mandate also stipulated that the Jewish national home policy could not prejudice
the civil or political rights of the existing majority population. Hence, the British had to
walk a fine line in their legislation on nationality and citizenship, and at the same time they
needed to act as a colonial power rather than as a trustee and draft a colonial citizenship
that gave only limited civil and political rights. The British mission to shape an apolitical
status of citizenship for the Arabs was served by their previous experience of colonial
concepts of citizenship in the empire. Some of this inspiration came from Lord Cromer in
Egypt, whose bureaucracy featured racial distinctions and procedures to separate
Europeans from local natives (Shenhav and Berda 2009). In the case of Palestine, the
procedures to acquire nationality and citizenship status separated Jewish immigrants from
the local Arab majority population.
In light of the mandate, the British feared giving explicit liberal citizenship rights and
practices along with citizenship status, such as the formation of a legislative or executive
body made up of representatives and proportional voting rights. Since Palestine’s
population was 93% Arab at the time the British arrived, these types of rights would
essentially allow the Arabs to have control of Palestine and its government. The League of
Nations’ mandate system was set up as an international trusteeship meant to facilitate
eventual self-government in the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Therefore,
the British had initially promised a legislative council, municipal councils, voting registers
and other measures of self-rule. After the ratification of the mandate, they realised that
these proposed democratic measures severely challenged the foundation of British policy
in Palestine – the facilitation of a Jewish national home through unrestricted immigration
and land sales as promised by the Balfour Declaration. Therefore, Palestinian citizenship
had to be created in such a way that it would not allow for any civil, political or social
rights or practices which threatened the Balfour Declaration as enshrined in the mandate.
The Palestinian Arabs’ own popular discourses and practices of citizenship
contradicted the British conception of the Palestinian citizen and ‘counter-invented’
nationality and citizenship. The discourses and practices involved, along with national
symbols and the rise of popular politics, created a new discursive field in which Palestinian
nationality and the accompanying civil, political and social rights were held by all
Palestinians by right of birth or descent. From the beginning of the British occupation of
Palestine in 1918, the inhabitants and their popular leadership and social organisations had
demonstrated significant agency to lobby the British and the newly created League of
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Nations with their demands for ‘natural and civil’ national rights. This was done through
the means of conferences, protest letters, petitions, demonstrations, boycotts, strikes and
the press. In this way, the concept of the Palestinian national, embodied with certain rights
and duties by right of his native birth in Palestine, was one which the urban and rural
classes could be made familiar with.
The Palestinians conceptualised themselves as native nationals rather than legal
citizens. The differences between the two statuses were clear in the interpretation which
the Palestinians gave to the national political and civil rights that they repeatedly asked the
British to grant. Palestinian leadership viewed the British legislation of citizenship,
codified by an order of HMG in 1925, as a product of colonialism due to the involvement
of the Zionist Organisation in the draft of the order and the fact the Palestinians were
neither informed of the wording of the draft nor able to voice concerns with it. By contrast,
the Palestinians and indeed the Arabs of the former Ottoman provinces felt that nationality
was a primordial status received by right of birth and language, and which came with the
right to self-determination. The Ottoman Law of Nationality, passed in 1869, had affirmed
citizenship conferred by means of both jus sanguinis and jus soli and the Palestinian
national movement expected a Palestinian nationality law to allow for the same. This
article will only briefly shed light on the Palestinian counter-discourses of nationality and
citizenship as they entail a separate study of their own; instead, it focuses on the British
legislative discourses and practices of Palestinian citizenship. At no other time except
between 1925 and 1948 did a Palestinian citizen exist, yet even today the citizenship laws
of the successor states of Palestine (Israel, the West Bank under Jordanian administration,
Gaza under Egyptian administration and the current Palestinian Authority) have included
some elements of Ottoman nationality legislation and Palestine Mandate citizenship
legislation.
Ottoman foundations of nationality and the discourse of ‘rights’
Historians of the modern nation-state in the Arab Middle East often point to its origin in
the Tanzimat reforms introduced by the Ottoman Empire in the 1830s. In the provinces,
the Tanzimat era created an imperial subject-citizenship that was meant to give a
non-religiously defined status to all individuals in the Empire’s realms. The history of the
Tanzimat has been discussed by many others and recently as a mission civilisatrice within
a project guided by Ottoman orientalism (Makdisi 2002, Deringil 2003, Kern 2007, 2011)
which offered only a façade of civil and political rights. However, the historical narrative
of how the discourses and applications of Ottoman citizenship were experienced by the
Palestinian Arabs has only been explored through the first decade of the twentieth century
(Campos 2011).
When applying the western European concept of a citizen to the status of the Arabs in
the Greater Syrian provinces at the end of the Ottoman Empire, one must recognize the
incompatibility of individual citizenship in terms of political, civil and social rights, with
the structure of traditional Arab society and politics (Isin 2005). Isin argues that an
‘oriental citizenship’ existed under the Ottoman government, in part, through the millet
system by which religious groups governed themselves, their relationships with other
millets and their relationship with the central authorities. Oriental citizenship meant that
all elements of citizenship were understood as institutions of negotiating difference –
albeit in terms of group relationships rather than a sense of individual citizenship (2007).
Until the end of Ottoman rule, the relationship between the Arabs and the Ottoman
government in Istanbul did not include demands for state accountability for their welfare,
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nor did the Arabs consider the state as a democratic institution in a political sense. They
were subjects of a sultan within an empire. The transition from subject to citizen status in
the Arab provinces in the final century of the Ottoman Empire led to the changes in identity
discourses in mandate Palestine although it initially meant little for the popular classes. It
took nearly three decades after the Tanzimat reforms for political changes to be felt in
greater Syria, with the reconfiguration of vilayets (administrative divisions in the Empire),
the introduction of official representative councils, the weakening of the main families in
the villages and countryside and the spread of ideas of nationalism and patriotism.
The 1869 Ottoman Law of Nationality introduced a definition Ottoman citizenship
(tabìiyet) without reference to religion. Article 7 of the law stated that all subjects were to
be Ottomans without religious distinction, and that this nationality could be gained or lost
according to conditions in the law (Salam 1997). As Kern (2007) notes, this was a shift from
subjecthood to citizenship as part of modernisation and as a unifying measure to help
cultivate loyalty of all individuals to the Ottoman central government. The rise of national
identities in the nineteenth century was a cause for Ottoman officials to look towards
western theories of race, identity and nation (Isin 2005). These theories included liberal
notions of citizenship and nation-state. In a type of mimicry, the nationality law and other
reforms stressed equality before the law regardless of religion or ethnicity. The terminology
came from western discourse (especially from the French Revolution): the reform edicts
evoked equality, liberty, natural rights and the protection of life and property.
According to historian Kemal Karpat (2002), the wording of the nationality law
attempted ‘to reconcile the Ottoman concept of the nationality stemming from the millet
[religious community] experience with the European idea of citizenship’. The law ended the
millet system of segregated status and began a new type of direct, individual relationship
with the state. Yet as historians have shown, notably McCarthy (1990) in his survey of the
population statistics of the empire, the term nationality came to refer to religious and
linguistic affiliation.
Also at the end of the nineteenth century, Arab intellectuals, especially in Egypt,
published writings on their own ideas of a territorial patriotism separate from the notion of
Ottoman nationality (Osmanlilik). The Egyptians first used the word ‘watan’ to refer to the
fatherland or homeland (influenced again by liberalism and the west, reflecting the French
idea of patrie) in reference to Egypt as the focus of identity, belonging and duties. This
concept spread among intellectuals and students in the cities of the provinces that made up
Greater Syria. It is argued that the popularisation of the concept of the watan as a signifier
of patriotic identity laid the groundwork for the idea of citizenship. Alongside the
emergence of Syrian, Egyptian and Ottoman nationalisms, citizenship became one of
several grounds for membership in the changing political community (Salam).
Notions of representation and participatory government through administrative and
provincial councils came out of the Tanzimat reforms. These notions later became rights
associated with civil and political rights of citizens in the nation-state (Miller 2007).
The constitution specifically listed the rights of the Ottoman inhabitants: that all Ottomans
were equal and their status could be acquired or lost by specific legal conditions and that
all were granted personal liberties.
National identity is related to citizenship in most cases, but it is an inherently different
identification. National identity is more of an abstract concept than a legal relationship
with a state. In the Andersonian sense, it is related to a common imagining by members of
a community as a ‘we’ that shares the same territory, language, culture, history, and world
view. Hence, being a national is not the same as being a citizen (Khalil 2007). In the case
of Greater Syria, changes in political and social structures, such as notions of
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representative rule, the spread of Osmanlilik and the revival of Arab culture were
instrumental in the new interpretations of identity. However, until the demise of the
Ottoman Empire in the First World War and the advent of Zionism in southern Syria, the
Palestinians did not consider themselves as having a Palestinian nationality but rather saw
themselves as Arab nationals.
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Nationality questions and legislation: the British administration in Palestine,
1918 –1925
The British set up their military administration in Palestine and occupied the territory from
December 1917. The military administration decided in 1918 to keep the status quo of
Ottoman laws until bureaucratic measures could be undertaken upon the arrival of the first
High Commissioner Herbert Samuel in July 1920. During these two years, and for quite
some time after, the most pressing issue was that of sovereignty in the area that became
Palestine.
In 1919, Lord Robert Cecil headed the British delegation to the newly created League
of Nations and also became president of the League of Nations Union. The British
delegation in fact drafted the proposals for three classes of mandated territories for the
victorious Allies to assume control over. Class A territories included the former Ottoman
Empire lands in which the inhabitants required some administrative assistance and advice
before sovereignty. The mandate classification system, drafted by the British delegation to
the League, greatly reflected the colonial view of ‘subject races’ and of apolitical
membership for natives of the territories. For the Class A mandates, which included
Palestine, independence was mentioned in Article 22 of the League of Nations charter:
it would be granted when the mandatory government was able to stand on its own.
The article did not make mention of who exactly would make the decision of when the
mandate could function without international assistance. Class B and Class C mandates
were for ‘less civilised’ former German colonies in Africa and the Pacific (Callahan 2008).
By the end of January 1920, the delegation to the League had a general theory of the
structure of the mandates but no consensus existed as to how they would work in practice.
Internal changes and tensions within each Allied government also influenced opinion on
the structure of the mandates and the role each government should play. Differences in
opinion would later affect the legislation of citizenship and dealings with the Arab
inhabitants of Palestine.
Since the entire Arab region which had been part of the Ottoman Empire remained
nominally part of that empire until the Ottomans signed a peace treaty, the Palestinian
Arabs, like the Empire’s other Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Circassians and others, remained
Ottoman nationals. The Allies continued to be at war with Turkey until 1923 (since a peace
treaty had not been signed) and until then the inhabitants of the former Ottoman lands
retained their Ottoman nationality. In Palestine, the British officials dealt with the status of
two different groups: the native inhabitants who had all been Ottomans, and the immigrant
Jews who arrived in the country. Both were treated differently in regard to their
‘nationality’.
The Zionist movement led by Chaim Weizmann had a disproportionately large
influence into the discussions of the nationality of inhabitants of Palestine. Weizmann,
after seeing the earliest draft mandate, made several proposals regarding nationality to the
British Secretary of State in early 1919. He and other Zionists suggested that Jews should
receive preferential treatment and that Jewish citizens were to be distinct from other
citizens of Palestine. The British responded by noting that the potential difficulties of such
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a measure included the Arab demands for the same subject status and the impossibility of
maintaining a suitable mandate with such a provision (FO 371/2/10 1919).
The actual specifics of who these ‘citizens’ were came in further clauses of the draft
mandate. The Palestine draft stated that all Ottoman subjects of Palestine would become
Palestinian citizens at the date of the ratification of the peace treaty and thereby lose their
Ottoman nationality unless an individual notified the government within 12 months of his
desire to keep Ottoman nationality and leave Palestine. Clause 12 of the draft further
specified that Ottoman subjects who usually reside in Palestine and who were absent on the
date of ratification of the peace treaty would become citizens if they returned to Palestine
within 12 months and took up permanent residence. Meanwhile after ratification, Jewish
immigrants who took up residence in Palestine would become Palestinian citizens after
two years. The ratified mandate and the draft stipulated that the government must enact an
official nationality law for the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship for Jews within two
years after the ratification of the mandate.
A second important clause of the draft, later to be intensely debated, stated that the
foreign relations of the Palestine government were to be undertaken by Great Britain, and
the citizens of Palestine were entitled to British protection when outside of Palestine
(CO 323/831/19 1920). The protection offered for native Ottomans before a peace treaty
was signed remained questionable. The draft laid out very few points that could be used to
construct a proper nationality law and indeed did not differentiate between nationality and
citizenship. Colonial officials discussed the issue of citizenship at length in the years
before the mandate was officially given to the British in 1923, but a complete order on the
topic did not appear in the 1922 Order-in-Council or elsewhere until HMG introduced the
citizenship order-in-council in 1925.
Mandated inhabitants: imperial protection, British nationality or citizenship?
The first reason for ambiguity in legislation and action to ensure a status for native-born
Palestinians was the uncertainty over sovereignty in the early years of the League of
Nations before the ratification of the Palestine Mandate. Neither the League nor the draft
mandate spelt out who held sovereignty and if authority of the High Commissioners in
Palestine came from the League of Nations, the British Crown, the Parliament or some
other international body. The mandate text itself also did not mention the acquisition of
nationality of the former Ottoman subjects in Palestine. The British were meant to hold
their mandates as trusteeships but they soon acted as the sovereign colonial power in
Palestine, rather than as a trustee for the League of Nations – for example, HMG enacted
legislation.
Amid the confusion and the competing opinions over sovereignty, the discussions of
Palestinian nationality centred on the status of the Palestinians. Were they meant to be
treated as British-protected persons, Ottoman subjects, foreigners or nationals of an ‘A’
mandate? Furthermore, what did these statuses mean outside of Palestine? What was to be
the status of non-Ottoman Jewish immigrants to Palestine? Dependent on their country of
origin, these immigrants were subjected to different consequences when they arrived to
Palestine and applied for provisional certificates of nationality. British-protected persons,
Jews or otherwise, were not considered colonial subjects or naturalised citizens of the
power whose protection they were under. With the demise of the Ottoman Empire and
British protection for certain Ottomans such as Jews, the Foreign Office tried to separate
the categories of British-protected persons and British subjects. Yet, no uniform regulation
was applied to mark the difference between the statuses (Stein 2011).
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The officials also debated whether the draft mandate conformed to British regulations,
especially the 1914 British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act and the 1919 Aliens
Restriction (Amendment) Act. Although the entrance of the Jewish immigrants was
coordinated with the Zionist Organisation, and the types of British protection they were
entitled to give to them remained unclear for at least the first half of the mandate. Due to
British regulations and the regulations of their home countries, when the immigrants
arrived to Palestine they often lost their birth-nationality. At the same time, the Arabs
remained Ottoman nationals in lieu of a peace treaty.
As to the status of the Arabs, the British officials first discussed the Arabs’ nationality
classifications and practices at length in terms of law court and tax privilege protections for
foreigners and Ottoman subjects in the former Empire and the status of both in places such
as Egypt and Syria, as well as the lack of a British passport or travel documents for
inhabitants. Furthermore, the mandate’s provision in Article 12 concerning protections for
the inhabitants of the former Ottoman territories elicited debate between British Foreign
Secretary Lord Curzon and the High Commissioner at the end of 1920 over what consular
protections the British were obliged to offer to former Ottoman subjects outside of
mandated territories (CO 323/831/19 1920). To add to the confusion, Palestine was
defined as an A mandate, and British protected-person status was given to inhabitants of B
and C mandates. For A mandates, the mandate administration itself, not the home
government of the mandatory power, was to offer its own protection for inhabitants.
The international legal status of the Palestinians as contemplated by the British
was relevant to their pre-mandate national identity. If they acquired the position of
British-protected subjects, this came with all of the accompanying rights, privileges and
protections enjoyed while outside of Palestine. Further questions of citizenship practices
given on behalf of the mandatory power came as a corollary of debates over consular
protection for Arab and British residents of Palestine and the issue of passports and visas for
both Arabs and Jews living in Greater Syria. British consulates and officials alternately
treated Palestinians as ‘former alien enemies’, foreigners or British-protected persons in
their travels outside of Palestine. In one particular instance, immigration officials treated a
Palestinian holding a British passport and a valid Ottoman passport as a ‘former alien
enemy’ (CO 323/831/81 1920).
A practical issue for the British over privileges was the benefits accrued by former
Ottoman subjects under the jurisdiction of Egypt’s Mixed Courts. Under a British mandate,
if the Palestinian Arabs received British protection, they could be tried in Mixed Courts by
British or French judges. At the very least, this would affirm their status as British-protected
persons and at most it would indicate that the Palestinians were akin to British subjects.
Curzon suggested that the British government was entitled under the mandate terms to
provide British protection and attempt to withdraw ‘selected individuals’ from the Native
Courts and place their trials in the Mixed Courts. The phrase ‘selected individuals’ had a
specific meaning: Curzon clarified that the ‘better-educated’ Palestinian Arabs and Jews
would not receive an ‘adequate standard of justice’ in the Egyptian Native Courts.
To further prove whom he meant to receive capitulatory privileges, he added that the British
protectorate government in Egypt assumed the Levantine Arabs to be ‘on a lower plane
of civilisation than the average Egyptian, and, generally speaking, at the present time
the statement would appear to be correct’ (FO 141/495/1). This correspondence shows
the colonial officials’ perception of two distinct nationalities in Palestine: the native
non-Jewish Arabs and the native and immigrant Jewish inhabitants. The documents also
reveal that the pre-mandate national identity of the inhabitants of Palestine determined
which privileges were to become part of their identity under British administration.
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Nationality legislation
In direct relation to citizenship, the possibilities for a future constitution and steps towards
self-government included the establishment and composition of the proposed partially
elected Legislative Council. The administration in Palestine and the government in
London debated the framework and functions of the council, but decided they could not
pass any electoral law to grant franchise before ratification of the mandate; after that, they
would still need an order-in-council to regulate Palestinian nationality. Without the latter,
electoral registers for the territory could not be compiled and the British depended on such
registers in order to properly divide the population by religion and decide upon the system
of secondary electors for the council. A nationality law was necessary to define who a
Palestinian citizen was in order to grant voting rights.
High Commissioner Samuel noted that he favoured the nationality order-in-council to be
passed first because he had promised early municipal elections (CO 733/14/117 1921) but by
1922 that option had not panned out. After the ratification of the Palestine Mandate in
September 1922, Great Britain immediately finished its draft constitution and legislative
council election orders. Both were ratified by the King, as done in colonies and protectorates.
The Palestine Order-in-Council of 1922 served as the first constitution of the Palestine
government. Once the 1922 Order-in-Council came into force, the British began to dismantle
some Ottoman laws but did not repeal the 1869 Ottoman Nationality Order. The British
passed an important second piece of legislation: the 1922 Palestine Electoral Order-inCouncil, which set the regulations for elections to the future Legislative Council. Crucially,
the order also defined who a Palestinian citizen was for the purpose of the franchise only:
those considered citizens included ‘Turkish subjects’ habitually resident in Palestine when
the order started to be applied, and all other inhabitants not of ‘Turkish nationality’ habitually
resident in Palestine (such as Jewish immigrants) provided they applied for provisional
citizenship within two months. In effect, the status of the Jewish immigrants was covered by
the provisions of the Electoral Order and the Ottoman law of 1869 remained the basis for
Palestinian Arab nationality. These immigrants did not need to renounce their previous
nationality to be able to vote for a legislative council, nor did they acquire Palestinian
nationality (United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine, UNISPAL).
The order decreed that voting rights, the first political right of citizenship given to
Palestinians, would be on the basis of communal identity defined by religion – an
important concept to British rule in Palestine. Since the Ottoman Empire had attempted
in the second half of the nineteenth century to do away with the millet system in favour of
secular nationality, this voting division by religious communities did not reflect the
socio-political reality in Palestine nor any emerging trend towards an equal citizenship. The
perception of Palestine as based on religious communities is an example of the role of
orientalism in the British interpretation of Ottoman and mandate citizenship status, and the
colonial officials applied this type of imperial thought through the provision for voting
rights based on religion. Through the mentality of orientalism and separation of religions in
Palestine, the British officials in London in 1922 took full control in the process of
‘inventing’ identity by their definition of both a foreigner and citizen.
In 1921, colonial officials and Palestine Attorney General Norman Bentwich began the
draft Palestine Nationality Order-in-Council. The British did not create Palestinian
nationality from a blank slate or out of an agreed-upon set of principles or even from the
effort of one department. In order to properly trace the legislative development of
Palestinian nationality and citizenship, historians must sort through records in the
Colonial, Foreign, Home and India Offices, as well as records from Parliamentary debates,
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Trade and Treasury Offices, the Crown Agents and the Law Officers. The discussions
between these departments and the resulting drafts of the nationality order also owed to the
influence of officials in Egypt, the French administration in Syria and most importantly of
the Zionist Organisation in London and its leadership in Palestine.
Palestine’s first attorney general, Norman Bentwich, brought up the need to address the
change in nationality of Ottoman subjects and Jewish immigrants habitually resident in
Palestine soon after the civil administration came to power. The law was first framed and
submitted to the Foreign Office in early February 1921, while the Colonial Office proposed
several ways to pass the crucial nationality ordinance in conjunction with a legislative
council election ordinance. The nationality order elicited further departmental and public
debate. Its draft differed from the Treaty of Sevres nationality stipulations (and Sevres’
later-ratified successor, the Treaty of Lausanne) in various ways. The British found
complexities in framing nationality to meet the requirements for Palestine as a territory
affected by the treaty. One difference affected the so-called Ottoman subjects in Palestine
who wanted to keep Ottoman nationality in order to then opt for the nationality of the
Hejaz, Mesopotamia or Syria. The order stated that Ottoman subjects in Palestine could
not opt for the three above-mentioned nationalities because the ‘race’ of the majority
population in those countries was the same as the race in Palestine, defined as Arab.
The Zionist Organisation suggested that the British omit this clause even if the peace treaty
contained it because it did not benefit the former Ottoman nationals in Syria or
Mesopotamia who were Jewish Arabs and wanted to opt for Palestinian nationality
(CO 733/6/121 1921).
Former Ottoman subjects could opt for the new Turkish nationality even if they
automatically received Palestinian nationality once Sevres’ replacement, the Treaty of
Lausanne, and its Article 123 came into force. However, 12 months after the treaty
ratification, Ottoman subjects who lived in Palestine lost the right to opt for Turkish
nationality. Furthermore, the Home Office held the opinion that the jus sanguinis provision
of nationality, while appropriate to Palestine, should be limited in such a way that the
nationality did not pass indefinitely through native-born Palestinian fathers to future
generations who were resident outside of Palestine. Contrary to the treaty, the Home
Office recommended the limit of citizenship passed by blood to the second generation born
outside of Palestine in accordance with the British Nationality Act of 1914 (CO 733/80/48
1924).
Importantly, terminology continued to be an unresolved issue in the early draft
nationality ordinance and at odds with the Treaty of Sevres. The ordinance’s early drafts
adopted the terms ‘Palestinian subject’ and ‘Palestinian nationality’ to indicate the
international status of Palestinians, but Article 29 of the treaty used ‘citizen’ to mean the
same thing. It is interesting to observe that in a memo from High Commissioner Samuel to
the Foreign Office of February 1921, citizenship was argued to be ‘not the term to denote
membership of a state that is usual in International Law’ (CO 733/12/13-14 1921). A
following Foreign Office memo on the nationality draft noted that the phrase ‘Palestinian
citizen’ should be used throughout as the author knew of no authorisation that stated the
term citizen was not used to denote a member of a state in international law. Another
memo continued that the term was used to denote a national of a state whose constitution
was not monarchial. ‘Subject’ seemed unfitting as well for Palestinians because if
inhabitants were subjects, they would be so vis-à-vis the King of England and in that case,
they would be British subjects (CO 733/9/391 1921).
The non-official Arab members of the High Commissioner’s nominated Advisory
Council had some knowledge of the draft nationality order. The objection of the
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Palestinian Arab notable members proved to be one which repeated itself in the years to
follow in other forums. According to Advisory Council minutes of 4 November 1921
(CO 733/6/184-185), after an explanation of the constitution and nationality laws which
would come into force, Turkan Bey spoke out that since the mandate and the Sevres Treaty
had not yet been approved and because the Advisory Council was not an elected body, the
Arab members refused to discuss the constitution. He added that the nationality law quite
obviously benefitted the Zionist immigrants. He indicated that the Arab opposition to the
two-year residency period required before an individual could be naturalised as a citizen.
He argued, not entirely accurately, that in every European country the residency
requirement was at least five years.
Other complications resulted from the lack of an internationally recognised, legal
Palestinian nationality. In the final months of 1922, the Palestine Administration and HMG
began to receive petitions from Palestinian emigrants stranded in places including
South American countries and Cuba. Since the British Foreign Office had not received
definite instructions on Palestinian nationality and since the qualifications of holders of
laissez-passers and provisional certificates of nationality were not uniformly recognised,
British consuls sometimes refused to issue passports or visas to Palestinians that would
allow for their return to Palestine or to continue on their travels for the purpose of business.
These travellers often remained for extended periods of time in one country or even
applied to French consuls for French passports for Syria (CO 733/27 1922).
The international recognition of Palestinian nationality finally came as a result of the
ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne, the formal peace treaty between Turkey and the
Allied Powers, in September 1924. Its provisions took the ‘nominal’ Ottoman citizenship
away from the Palestinians. According to the treaty, once the Ottoman Empire had ceased
to exist, the inhabitants of its vast territory came under the laws and regulations of the
successor states. In the provinces of Syria, these states were the British and French
mandate governments. In order for Ottoman nationals in Palestine to be subject to the laws
and regulations of the Palestine Mandate Administration as nationals of the territory, they
had to prove their status as Ottoman subjects and be resident in Palestine on the date the
Treaty of Lausanne came into force. The treaty also covered the status of Palestinian-born
individuals who resided outside of Palestine. Article 34 stated that Ottoman natives who
resided abroad could opt for their nationality within two years of the treaty’s ratification.
Despite the ratification of Lausanne, internal differences of opinion within the British
government continued. The Foreign Office wrote to the Home Office that Palestine did
‘not bear the slightest resemblances to an independent state’ and its citizens had no such
status as belonging to one in international law (CO 733/55/487-491 1923). In addition,
members of the Foreign Office questioned whether under international law Palestine came
within the category of definition as a territory in the British Empire, Colonies and
Dependencies. Not only did such questions matter in regard to the status of the inhabitants
of Palestine but also to imperial preference for private companies and trading agreements
in the region. The status of the mandate as a British trusteeship had little precedence.
The Foreign Office asked the Colonial Secretary what its status actually was defined as and
how trading agreements applied if Palestine did not come into this territorial category
(CO 733/9/315 1921). Without adequate answers from the government in Palestine or the
League, the Colonial Office then passed the questions throughout the departments of
government.
With the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne, the Palestine Administration edited its
nationality order draft in order to keep it in line with the articles and terminology of the
peace treaty. By the end of 1924, the Colonial Office noted that because of the Jewish
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policy in Palestine, a ‘set of unparalleled circumstances in the history of the world’, the
administration required different treatment in its timetable to pass the nationality order.
In a memo, colonial official Keith-Roach gave examples of lengths of residency in order to
become a citizen of the countries of Great Britain, the USA, Switzerland, Belgium, France
and Italy. All were at least five years. The Jews in Palestine, with their two-year residency
qualification, would have greater facilities in the mandate than any other country gave to a
person who desired to become its citizen (CO 733/271-273 1924). Others questioned
whether the draft order should include a definition of a ‘Jew’ and the relevance of this to
Palestinian nationality (FO 733/9/389 1921). Indeed, the Colonial Office and Joint Foreign
Committee secretary Lucien Wolf objected to the article of the draft Mandate which
gave non-Ottoman Jews who were habitual residents of Palestine ipso facto
citizenship. The objection was that this was a religious test of nationality and allowed
for non-Jewish foreigners or habitual residents to keep their respective nationalities, while
the Jews were required to give up any other nationality in order to receive Palestinian
nationality (CO 733/10/139 1921).
The Palestine Citizenship Order-in-Council 1925
The King of England passed the Palestine Citizenship Order-in-Council one year after the
Lausanne Treaty and its provisions officially came into force on 1 August 1925. This was
the only such citizenship order enacted by the British in any of their mandates or territories
at that time; in Iraq and Transjordan, local Arab authorities enacted nationality legislation
and had their own official representation to the British mandatory. In Britain’s African
mandates, inhabitants remained British-protected persons. Just like the other imperial
orders, the Citizenship Order was enacted by the British Government, not by the
Government of Palestine.
It is interesting to note that until the middle of 1924, the order-in-council draft to
regulate Palestinian citizenship was titled the Palestinian Nationality Order-in-Council.
Only in May did colonial officials recommend this be changed to the Palestinian
Citizenship Order-in-Council to avoid complications. By July, the draft order had
‘nationality’ crossed out and replaced with ‘citizenship’ (CO 733/80/599 1924). Only
shortly before the order passed, the Colonial Office changed ‘subject’ to ‘citizen’ in all
places and made a note that ‘national’ in the Treaty of Lausanne meant both subject and
citizen in the Citizenship Order. A short article written 15 years later by the former
Attorney General of Palestine Norman Bentwich offered the orientalist explanation.
Bentwich (1939) noted that citizen and citizenship replaced national and nationality in the
final order because of the ‘Oriental’ difference of the terminology. In oriental countries,
citizenship marked the allegiance to a state whereas membership of nationality was a
matter of race and religion. Both Arabs and Jews were equally Palestinian citizens, wrote
Bentwich, but they both claimed to have separate Arab or Jewish nationality.
All of the order’s provisions concerning naturalisation and the process by which
nationality passed through male citizens were drawn from the British Nationality and
Status of Aliens Act of 1914. The Citizenship Order’s first article declared Turkish
subjects habitually resident in Palestine on 1 August 1924 to automatically be Palestinian
citizens on 1 August 1925. This came from Article 30 of the Lausanne Treaty. This article
did not account for inhabitants who had been given provisional nationality under the 1922
Legislative Election Order, whom included non-Turkish subjects. It also did not account
for Ottoman subjects resident abroad on 1 August 1924. Individuals who had Ottoman
nationality under the 1869 law but were stateless also were not considered automatic
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Palestinian citizens. However, Article 5 granted that non-Turkish residents deemed
citizens under Article 2 of the Legislative Election Order subject to their intention to opt
for citizenship. In total, the number of Ottoman citizens resident in Palestine on the date of
the order who became Palestinian citizens was nearly 730,000 (Qafisheh 2008).
The order’s following provisions were for individuals who needed to opt for
Palestinian naturalisation rather than have it automatically confirmed. Individuals over
18 years of age born in Palestine and with Ottoman nationality who had habitual residence
abroad on 1 August 1925 could opt for citizenship in accordance with the regulation that
they must have been in Palestine for six months prior to this (in accordance with the Treaty
of Lausanne), they had not acquired a foreign nationality and subject to the consent of the
Government of Palestine. This option had to be taken within two years from the date of the
order, by 31 July 1927.
However, the difference in wording of Article 2 from its sister Article 34 in the Treaty
of Lausanne was cause for denial of citizenship to individuals who would have otherwise
been considered Palestinian. In Article 34 of Lausanne, the phrase ‘native of’ had been
used, whereas the Citizenship Order used ‘born in Palestine’ – done mostly on
recommendation from the Home Office that nationality by birth not be passed on
indefinitely for former Ottoman subjects residing outside of Palestine (ibid.). This slight
change meant these descendants of Palestinians with Ottoman nationality were not, in fact,
to be ipso facto Palestinians. It also meant that the order did not follow international
standards, British nationality law and the 1869 Ottoman law which all stated that children
receive their nationality by blood.
To be naturalised, non-Ottoman citizen applicants with provisional certificates of
nationality were required to have been resident since October 1922, and had to surrender
any passport or laissez-passer on receipt of citizenship. To naturalise, the applicant had to
declare he would reside permanently in Palestine, take an oath of allegiance to the
government and prove to an official he could converse in English, Arabic or Hebrew.
Native Palestinians who automatically became citizens could receive a certificate of
citizenship which entitled them to political rights, powers and privileges and subjected
them to all obligations, duties and liabilities of a Palestinian citizen – theoretically.
A certificate of naturalisation stated basically the same (CO 733/88/383-398 1925).
The activation of Palestinian citizenship: reactions and problems
A draft circular went out to all British consuls immediately to give instructions for the
provisions of Palestinian citizenship acquisition by Turkish nationals abroad. These
nationals initially had two years to opt for Palestinian citizenship. They also had special
application forms to fill out, with questions of where and for how long they had lived
outside of Palestine.
High Commissioner Samuel exercised sole power to amend the order – and he did so
drastically before he officially left office. In November of 1925, the change was
announced. The date for option of nationality for Ottomans residing outside of Palestine
changed. Rather than allow for two years to do so, beginning 1 August 1925, the two-year
timeframe for option was put into effect retroactively, from 6 August 1924 – the date of
the Treaty of Lausanne. This change further brought the order in line with the Treaty of
Lausanne’s Article 34. It meant Palestinians who lived abroad, such as students or
merchants, in August of 1924 had less than one year to opt for nationality.
Without ipso facto nationality, Palestinians habitually abroad on 1 August 1924 lost
Ottoman citizenship with the Treaty of Lausanne and were unaccounted for in the
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Citizenship Order-in-Council. Similarly, those resident abroad on 1 August 1925 who could
not return to opt for citizenship within the given timeframe lost their Ottoman nationality
and had not been given a new nationality by the Palestine Citizenship Order unless they
returned to Palestine with six months to spare before the end of July 1926 to meet the
residency requirement to apply for citizenship. These individuals usually also needed an
unexpired provisional certification of nationality or otherwise needed to prove they or their
father had been an Ottoman subject not only to opt for citizenship but also to leave their
residence abroad and travel. Without a clear status, these Palestinians often could not obtain
the proper travel documents to return to Palestine to reside for the required time period.
Palestinians in places such as South America, Cuba and Haiti were subjected to the
most difficulty. These Palestinians, then, could not simply reside anywhere, since they had
become stateless and without any diplomatic protection. They encountered difficulties even
receiving a travel visa to Palestine to visit family (Qafisheh 2008).
The Palestinian Arab Executive leadership unanimously rejected the citizenship
legislation on the basis that it denied citizenship to native-born Palestinians while it
privileged Jewish immigrants and that it neglected provisions for natural civil and political
rights. The press, especially Bethlehem resident Issa Bandak’s newspaper Sawt al-Sha’b,
became the main medium through which discussions on the citizenship order and letters
from the diaspora were published. In periodicals as well as in protest memorandum, the
Palestinians referred to the order as the ‘nationality law’ (qanoon al-jinsiyya or huq aljinsiyya) and generally used the Arabic term for ‘nationality’ ( jinsiyya) in reference to the
more legalistic and perhaps modern ‘citizenship’ (muwatina). Popular leaders and
newspapers wrote to the British and League to decry the denial of citizenship to thousands
of Palestinians who lived abroad. In 1926, Bandak established the Committee for the
Defense of Palestinian Arab Emigrant Citizenship Rights which lobbied tirelessly into the
1930s against the citizenship order and its amendments.
The Palestinians argued that the order was unlawful because it was not enacted by a
parliament elected by the people. Indeed, the Palestinians were never allowed to see any
drafts of the order. If the Palestinians accepted the legitimacy of the enactment ‘of this
controversial law’, the order remained illegal and benefitted what was then still only a
small minority of Jewish immigrants. Bandak concluded that many world governments
enacted strong barriers to the facilitation of nationality of foreigners who sought the same
livelihoods as their own native populations. In Palestine, the establishment of a Jewish
national home, strengthened by the nationality order, would annihilate Arab national
control of the country’s facilities, take land from Arab hands and deplete Arab financial
wealth. This condition would continue despite the existence of a nationality law, Bandak
argued. He pledged that the Palestinians would work to stop the law unless they could
enact a new law ‘legitimately by constitutional means’ (‘The law prejudices the rights of
the Arabs’, 1925).
Conclusion
The citizenship order, once in effect, created local citizenship only for Palestinians. When
outside of Palestine, citizens became in the position of British-protected persons but their
Palestinian nationality was recognised through the Treaty of Lausanne. Citizenship in this
sense was not equal to full nationality as far as international law was concerned, since in the
international arena, a Palestinian became a British-protected person (CO 733/105/45 1925).
The order-in-council made former Ottoman subjects habitually resident in Palestine into
Palestinian citizens – not the international Treaty of Lausanne. The latter made nationals of
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territories detached from Turkey into nationals of the state to which the territory was
transferred – the mandate but more specifically, Great Britain. The Palestine citizenship
order did not grant Palestinian citizens the rights they agitated for as citizens: control over
their own government or rights to their borders, treaties, educational affairs, public works,
election laws, taxation and tithe rates or trade laws (CO 733/71/230-286 1924).
Confusion over the order and its implementation, amendments and inequalities in
application between the Jews and Arabs continued to be discussed by the Palestinians well
into the 1930s. Because the mandate was run as a colony and not a trusteeship, the voice of
the Palestinian citizens themselves was silenced. Throughout the time of British
administration, laws, regulations and decrees were handed down by British colonial officials
or the government in London only. Despite the British liberal notions of citizenship, only an
orientalist conception existed in Palestine. The British ruled over subject races through the
principle of exception (as in Egypt and India) rather than a liberal model of bureaucracy
(Shenhav and Berda 2009), and officials created nationality distinctions through a dual
administrative system to serve the purposes of the mandate and the Jewish national
home policy.
The British amended the order several times before the end of the mandate, but the
amendments reflected the problems the law posed for the Jewish immigrants – the
amendments rarely benefitted the Arabs. In the 1930s, the British made changes to their
legislation that effectively allowed all native Palestinians to obtain naturalisation provided
they returned from abroad and resided permanently in Palestine.
Citizenship in Palestine came only as a legal certificate of status and did not convey
Great Britain’s own liberal, western citizenship. Nationality remained in sharp contrast
with legal citizenship in the discourses of the Palestinians. What was clear to the
Palestinians, however, was that the ultimate power to decide on their legal identity lay with
the British Empire. The only solution – the exit of the British from Palestine came in
exchange for the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the cancellation of any
internationally recognised Palestinian citizenship.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank the comments of the two anonymous reviewers, Professor Engin Isin
for being a most helpful editor with his comments, and acknowledge the comments made at the
Citizenship After Orientalism conference at the Open University, where a shorter version of this
article was presented.
Primary References
Miràat al-Sharq, 1925. The law prejudices the rights of the Arabs. Miràat al-Sharq, 21
October
The Palestine Order-in-Council, 10 August 1922 and Palestine Legislative Election Order,
10 August 1922. Available from: http://unispal.un.org/ [Accessed 20 April 2010]
Foreign Office:
Future Constitution of Palestine, Zionist Proposals with Secretary of State’s Amendments,
27 February 1919. FO 608/98/8
Palestine Draft Nationality Ordinance memo, 8 April 1921. FO 733/9/389
Palestinian Draft Nationality Ordinance, 9 February 1921. FO records. CO 733/9/391
Status of Palestine, Jan – April 1921. FO records. CO 733/9/315
Memo on endorsement of Provisional Certificates, 8 May 1923. FO records. CO
733/55/487-491
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Colonial Office:
The national status of Palestinians, and granting of permission for immigration into
Palestine, undated. CO 323/831/81
Passports for Jews and Arabs of Palestinian or Syrian Origin, 5 July 1920. CO 323/831/19
Draft Palestinian Nationality Order, 7 June 1921. CO 733/12/13-14
Draft Mandate for Palestinian and Mesopotamia memo, June 1921. CO 733/10/139
Palestinian Nationality memo, August 1921. CO 733/14/117
Nationality Order-in-Council draft memo, 27 October 1921. CO 733/6/121
Status of applicants for Palestinian citizenship under the Electoral Order-in-Council, 25
September 1922. CO 733/32/32
Foreign Office memo, June 1923. CO 733/55/545
Palestinian Nationality Order-in-Council memo, 8 May 1924. CO 733/80/48
Palestinian Nationality Order-in-Council draft, 8 July 1924. CO 733/80/599
Local Government Interim Report, 11 July 1924. CO 733/71/230-286
Nationality Order-in-Council, October 1924. CO 733/271-273
Palestine Citizenship Order-in-Council, 30 January 1925. CO 733/88/383-398
Constitutional Position of Palestine, 20 February 1925. CO 733/105/45
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