Información aportada por los testigos 1. Comandante de la aeronave de BEL3HH

Kurds and Palestinians provide ample empirical cases for research agendas with reference to the politics of citizenship in their own right. Indeed, from an analytical perspective, they

69

Shah points out that through the kafala system of visa trading, a work visa for an Indian is sold for 2042 USD while a work visa for an Iranian is sold for 4084 USD. She concludes that “a fundamental difficulty in the implementation of any policies aimed at curbing visa trading is therefore the ease with which an ordinary local sponsor can have a continuous source of income coupled with a market in sending countries where many are eager to buy such visas at any cost.” Shah, "Recent labour immigration policies in the oil-rich Gulf: How effective are they likely to be?," 9.

70

On the kafala system as structure of dominance, see Longva, Walls built on sand: migration, exclusion and society in Kuwait: 78-111. On an analysis of political clientelism, citizenship and the kafala system, see Maktabi, "The Gulf crisis (1990-1991) and the Kuwaiti regime: Legitimacy and stability in a rentier state," 6-8, 45-47.

71

In a forthcoming paper I address questions related to the citizens / non-citizen divide with reference to pressures for reform in family law in Kuwait and Qatar. My hypothesis is that Gulf states have more in common with Levantine states in the Mashreq than with Maghreb states with regards to contained and contracted forms of female citizenship, partly because of the non-taxed based welfare and the abundance of low-paid and unskilled non-citizen workforce which nurture what I would call ‘Victorian Islamist ideals’. The current working title of the paper is “Family Law and female citizenship in Kuwait and Qatar: A comparative perspective in light of globalization in the MENA region”, to be presented at the 2012 Gulf Research Meeting, “Women and Globalization in the GCC: Negotiating States, Agency and Social Change”, Gulf Research Centre, Cambridge University, 11 – 14 July 2012.

52

represent ‘litmus cases’ with reference to the politicization of the demos in the region. This endeavor lies, however, outside the realm of this thesis. In as far the legal status of

Palestinians and Kurds is addressed, they exemplify how and in which ways they are included or excluded in different territorial states. The political situation of Palestinians and Kurds differs significantly on one point: Kurds72 obtained, with the exception of segments in Lebanon and Syria73, legal citizenship in the territorial states of their abode. The majority of Palestinians are de jure and de facto stateless.

Palestinians represent a conglomerate and multi-faceted body of inhabitants with an array of legal – at times incongruent, at other times overlapping – statuses (stateless, citizen, non-citizen, long-term migrant workers, naturalized, denaturalized) contingent on shifting political interests of power-holders in each of the states where Palestinians reside.74 Significant segments of the Palestinian population share similar legal and socio-economic traits with both stateless residents and migrant workforce in the MENA region. The situation of Palestinian refugees and Palestinians defined as ‘displaced persons’75, differs

nevertheless, from the majority of migrant non-Arab workforce for two main reasons: First, while the latter reside in the MENA region, they are not of the region. The majority of non- Arab workers have homelands that are recognized as territorial states by the international

72

On Kurds, see Nicole F. Watts, "Institutionalizing Virtual Kurdistan West: Transnational networks and ethnic contention in international affairs," in Boundaries and belonging: states and societies in the struggle to shape identities and local practices, ed. Joel S. Migdal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Denise Natali, The Kurds and the state: evolving national identity in Iraq, Turkey and Iran (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Press, 2005); Khalid Khayati, "From victim diaspora to transborder citizenship?: diaspora formation and transnational relations among Kurds in France and Sweden" (Institutionen för Tema, Linköpings universitet, 2007).

73

Kurds number approximately 10 per cent of the Syrian population. An estimated 300,000 Kurds born in Syria remain, According to Human Rights Watch, subject to arbitrary denial of citizenship following a census carried out in 1962. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2011: Syria, URL: http://www.hrw.org/world-report- 2011/syria, accessed 12 December 2011. Following the uprisings in Syria in 2011, Syrian authorities issues Legislative Decree nr. 49 on 7 April 2011 granting Syrian citizenship to persons registered in the registers of (predominantly Kurdish populated town of) Hasaka as ‘foreigners’. See “Syria to grant citizenship to some of its stateless Kurds”, URL: http://kurdishrights.org/2011/04/07/syria-to-grant-citizenship-to-some-of-its-stateless- kurds, accessed 12 December 2011.

74

See my “The formal relations to the states: Givens and strategies”, chapter 3 in Signe Gilen et al., "Finding Ways: Palestinian Coping Strategies in Changing Environments," (Oslo: Fafo Institue for Applied Social Science, 1994), 23-41. On Palestinians, see Ingvild Hauge, "The political dynamics of citizenship: an analysis of demographic structure, state-idea, and regime as determinants of citizenship policies regarding the palestinians in Israel, Jordan and Lebanon" (Universitetet, 1997). See also Roula El-Rifai and Rex Brynen, Palestinian refugees: challenges of repatriation and development (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007); Rex Brynen and Roula al Rifai, Compensating Palestinian refugees: legal economic and political perspectives (I. B. Tauris, 2011).

75

The term ‘displaced’ refers to Palestinians who became refugees following the 1967 war and who do not have a 1948 refugee status as defined by The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

53

community represented by the United Nations (hereafter UN). Second, stateless

Palestinians, who also constitute a sizeable body of migrant Arab speaking workers in MENA, have legal rights to a homeland in international law through UN Resolutions 194 and 242, but no sovereign territorial state to be members of yet. The political plight of Palestinians with refugee and/or stateless legal status remains therefore enshrined in international law, and as such, the legal responsibility of the international community, and not only the legal prerogative of single states.76

2.3 Citizenship regimes and the distribution of rights within the polity