Nationality constitutes a legal bond that connects individuals with a specific territory, making them citizens of that territory. It is therefore imperative to examine the boundaries of Palestine in order to define the piece of land on which Palestinian nationality was established.
In a broader international context, the “nationality law… showed that the Palestinians formed a nation, and that Palestine was a State, though provisionally under guardianship.”
90 The inclusion of Palestinian nationality in the text of the Palestine Mandate was the first step towards an international recognition of the Palestinian people as distinct from the Ottoman people and other peoples. Palestinian nationality, like any other nationality, constitutes the formula by which a certain group of individuals are being legally connected and enabled to form the people element of the state.
91
The status of Palestine and the nationality of its inhabitants were finally settled by the Treaty of Lausanne from the perspective of public international law. In a report submitted to the League of Nations, the British government pointed out: “The ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne in Aug., 1924, finally regularised the international status of Palestine.”
123 And, thereafter, “Palestine could, at last, obtain a separate nationality.”
124
Drawing up the framework of nationality, Article 30 of the Treaty of Lausanne stated:
Article 30 is of a great significance. It constituted a declaration of existing international law and the standard practice of states. This was despite the absence of a definite international law rule of state succession under which the nationals of predecessor state could
ipso facto acquire the nationality of the successor.
Henceforth, Palestinian nationality was first founded, according to international law, on 6 August 1924. And “treaty nationality in Palestine runs from that date.”
139 The Treaty of Lausanne had transformed the
de facto status of Palestinian nationality into
de jure existence from the angle of international law.
The automatic,
ipso facto, change from Ottoman to Palestinian nationality was dealt with in Article 1, paragraph 1, of the Citizenship Order, which declared:
Introduction This paper addresses the status of the inhabitants of the territory that has become known as ‘Palestine’ and that had been part of the Ottoman Empire since 1516, during the period star...
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