Israeli citizenship law
has two primary pieces of legislation governing the requirements for citizenship, the 1950 Law of Return and 1952 Citizenship Law. Every Jew has the unrestricted right to immigrate to Israel and become an Israeli citizen. Individuals born within the country receive citizenship at birth if at least one parent is a citizen. Non-Jewish foreigners may naturalize after living there for at least three years while holding permanent residency and demonstrating proficiency in the Hebrew language. Naturalizing non-Jews are additionally required to renounce their previous nationalities, while Jewish immigrants are not subject to this requirement.
The territory of modern Israel was formerly administered by the British Empire as part of a League of Nations mandate for Palestine and local residents were British protected persons. The dissolution of the mandate in 1948 and subsequent conflict created a set of complex citizenship circumstances for the non-Jewish inhabitants of the region that continue to be unresolved. While pre-1948 Palestinian Arab residents of the former mandate and their descendants who remained living in Israel were granted Israeli citizenship in 1980, those resident in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are largely considered stateless.
Terminology
The distinction between the meaning of the terms citizenship and nationality is not always clear in the English language and differs by country. Generally, nationality refers to a person's legal belonging to a state and is the common term used in international treaties when referring to members of a state; citizenship refers to the set of rights and duties a person has in that nation.In the Israeli context, nationality is not linked to a person's origin from a particular territory but is more broadly defined. Although the term may be used in other countries to indicate a person's ethnic group, the meaning in Israeli law is particularly expansive by including any person practicing Judaism and their descendants. Members of the Jewish nationality form the core part of Israel's citizenry, while the Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that an Israeli nationality does not exist. Legislation has defined Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people since 2018.
History
National status under British mandate
The region of Palestine was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1516. Accordingly, Ottoman nationality law applied to the area. Palestine was governed by the Ottomans for four centuries until British occupation in 1917 during the First World War. The area nominally remained an Ottoman territory following the conclusion of the war until the United Kingdom obtained a League of Nations mandate for the region in 1922. Similarly, local residents ostensibly continued their status as Ottoman subjects, although British authorities began issuing provisional certificates of Palestinian nationality shortly after the start of occupation. The terms of the mandate allowed Britain to exclude its application on certain parts of the region; this exclusion was exercised on the territory east of the Jordan River, where the Emirate of Transjordan was established.The Treaty of Lausanne established the basis for separate nationalities in Mandatory Palestine and all other territories ceded by the Ottoman Empire. The Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925 confirmed the transition from Ottoman/Turkish to Palestinian citizenship in local legislation; all Ottoman/Turkish subjects who were ordinarily resident in Palestine on 1 August 1925 became Palestinian citizens on that date. Turkish nationals originating from Mandate territory but habitually resident elsewhere on 6 August 1924 had a right to choose Palestinian citizenship, but this required an application within two years of the treaty's enforcement and approval by the Mandatory government. This right of option was later extended until 24 July 1945. A 1931 amendment automatically extended Palestinian citizenship to Turkish nationals who had been living in Palestine on 6 August 1924 but became resident abroad before 1 August 1925, unless they voluntarily acquired another nationality before 23 July 1931.
Legitimate children of a Palestinian father automatically held Palestinian citizenship. Any person born outside these conditions who held no other nationality and was otherwise stateless at birth also automatically acquired citizenship. Foreigners could obtain Palestinian citizenship through naturalization after residing in the territory for at least two of the three years preceding an application, fulfilling a language requirement, affirming their intention to permanently reside in Mandate territory, and satisfying a good character requirement.
Despite Britain's sovereignty over Palestinian territory, domestic law in the United Kingdom treated the mandate as foreign territory. Palestinian citizens were treated as British protected persons, rather than British subjects, meaning that they were aliens in the UK but could be issued Mandatory Palestine passports by British authorities. Protected persons could not travel to the UK without first requesting permission, but were afforded the same consular protection as British subjects when travelling outside the British Empire. This arrangement continued until termination of the British mandate on 14 May 1948, the same date on which the State of Israel was established.
Post-1948 transition
For the first four years after its establishment, Israel had no citizenship law and technically had no citizens. International law typically assumes the continued operation of laws of a predecessor state in the event of a succession of states. However, despite Israel's status as the successor state to Mandatory Palestine, Israeli courts during this time offered conflicting opinions on the continuing validity of Palestinian citizenship legislation enacted during the British mandate. While almost all courts held that Palestinian citizenship had ceased to exist at the end of the mandate in 1948 without a replacement status, there was one case in which a judge ruled that all residents of Palestine at the time of Israel's establishment were automatically Israeli nationals. The Supreme Court settled this issue in 1952, ruling that Palestinian citizens of the British mandate had not automatically become Israeli.Israeli citizenship policy is centered on two early pieces of legislation: the 1950 Law of Return and 1952 Citizenship Law. The Law of Return grants every Jew the right to migrate to and settle in Israel, reinforcing the central Zionist tenet of the return of all Jews to their traditional homeland. The Citizenship Law details the requirements for Israeli citizenship, dependent on an individual's religious affiliation, and explicitly repeals all prior British-enacted legislation concerning Palestinian nationality.
Status of Palestinian Arabs
Following its victory in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Israel controlled the majority of former Mandatory Palestine, including much of the land assigned for an Arab state under the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. The West Bank was annexed by Jordan while the Gaza Strip fell under the administration of Egypt. The UNRWA estimated that 720,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced during the war, with only 170,000 remaining in Israel after its establishment. Despite international support for the return of displaced Palestinians after conclusion of the war, the Israeli government was unwilling to allow what it regarded as a hostile population into its borders and barred them from returning. The administration justified this prohibition as a defensive measure against continued Arab incursions into Israeli territory as well as to official rhetoric from neighboring Arab states that expressed their desire to eliminate Israel, which views a Palestinian right of return to any part of its territory as an existential threat to the nation's security.Jewish residents at the time of Israel's establishment were granted Israeli citizenship based on right of return, but non-Jewish Palestinians were subject to strict residency requirements for claiming that status. They could only acquire citizenship based on their residence in 1952 if they were nationals of the British mandate before 1948, had registered as Israeli residents since February 1949 and remained registered, and had not left the country before claiming citizenship. These requirements were intended to systemically exclude Arabs from participation in the new state. About 90 percent of the Arab population that remained in Israel were barred from citizenship under the residence requirements and held no nationality.
Palestinians who managed to return to their homes in Israel after the war did not satisfy the conditions for citizenship under the 1952 law. This class of residents continued living in Israel but held no citizenship or residence status. A 1960 Supreme Court ruling partially addressed this by allowing a looser interpretation of the residential requirements; individuals who had permission to temporarily leave Israel during or shortly after the conflict qualified for citizenship, despite their gap in residence. The Knesset amended the Citizenship Law in 1980 to fully resolve statelessness for this group of residents; all Arab residents who had been living in Israel before 1948 were granted citizenship regardless of their eligibility under the 1952 residence requirements, along with their children.
Conversely, Palestinians who had fled to neighboring countries were not granted citizenship there and remained stateless except those who resettled in Jordan. After Israel took control of the West Bank following the 1967 Six-Day War, Jordan maintained its sovereignty claim over the area until 1988, when it renounced this claim and unilaterally severed all links to the region. Palestinians living in the West Bank lost Jordanian nationality while those residing in the rest of Jordan maintained that status.
Following agreement on the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, Palestinians have been eligible for Palestinian Authority passports. However, the terms of these accords did not result in the creation of a definitive Palestinian state, nor has any legislation regulating Palestinian citizenship been enacted by the Palestinian Legislative Council. Palestinians may be considered stateless by other countries as their status is not tied to a sovereign state, although recognition of their statelessness varies by government.