London, UK Published online: 30 Aug 2012.

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1 This article was downloaded by: [Université de Genève] On: 16 September 2013, At: 06:26 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: Registered office: Mortimer House, Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Citizenship Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: The creation of Palestinian citizenship under an international mandate: legislation, discourses and practices, Lauren Banko a a Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK Published online: 30 Aug To cite this article: Lauren Banko (2012) The creation of Palestinian citizenship under an international mandate: legislation, discourses and practices, , Citizenship Studies, 16:5-6, , DOI: / To link to this article: PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content ) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

2 Citizenship Studies Vol. 16, Nos. 5 6, August 2012, The creation of Palestinian citizenship under an international mandate: legislation, discourses and practices, Lauren Banko* Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK (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 * lauren.banko@soas.ac.uk ISSN print/issn online q 2012 Taylor & Francis

3 642 L. Banko 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

4 Citizenship Studies 643 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,

5 644 L. Banko 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

6 Citizenship Studies 645 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. Nationality questions and legislation: the British administration in Palestine, The British set up their military administration in Palestine and occupied the territory from December 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 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 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

7 646 L. Banko 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/ ). 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/ ). 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 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).

8 Citizenship Studies 647 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/ ). 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/ ). 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.

9 648 L. Banko 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/ ) 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-in- Council, 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,

10 Citizenship Studies 649 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/ ). 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/ ). 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/ ). 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/ ). 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

11 650 L. Banko 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/ ), 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/ ). 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 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/ ). 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/ ). 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

12 Citizenship Studies 651 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/ ). Others questioned whether the draft order should include a definition of a Jew and the relevance of this to Palestinian nationality (FO 733/9/ ). 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/ ). 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 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/ ). 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 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 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 Individuals who had Ottoman nationality under the 1869 law but were stateless also were not considered automatic

13 652 L. Banko 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 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/ ). 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