Mass numbers of foreign Jews acquired Palestinian nationality by naturalization before 1948 with a view to contribute to the establishment of the ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine. At the end of the mandate, the total number of persons who acquired Palestinian nationality by naturalization was estimated at 132,616; about 99% of them were Jews.677
Under the auspices of the League of Nations and the administration of Britain, this objective had no precedent in world history.678 As required by the Palestine Mandate, the naturalization provisions of the 1925 Palestinian Citizenship Order were “framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine” (Article 7 of the Mandate). The Council of the League of Nations took part, systematically, in the question of naturalization of Jews in Palestine. The Council, represented by its Permanent Mandates Commission, had persuaded Britain to speed up its efforts to naturalize immigrant Jews. As early as 23 August 1922, the said Commission inquired whether special nationality provisions were, by using the words of the said Article 7, “framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews?”679 In a direct reply to this question, the British Government provided detailed
677 Survey of Palestine, Vol. I, p. 208.
678 The practical implications of naturalization in Palestine, as it shall become shortly apparent, were unique; there was no similar such case in the world, neither in the mandated territories nor elsewhere.
information relating to naturalization. Such information provoked extensive discussion among the members of the Mandates Commission.680
The naturalization provisions were the most significant aspect of the Palestinian Citizenship Order, and, again, were an explicit translation of Article 7 of the Palestine Mandate. This was summarized by the Supreme Court of Palestine, on 28 February 1929, in Palevitch v. Chief Immigration Officer.681 The case related to an
immigrant Jew from Italy who applied for naturalization in Palestine. It was held: Article [7 of the Mandate] is concerned with the enactment of a nationality law in which, so says this Article of the Mandate, there are to be included provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine. This has been done by the passing of the Palestine Citizenship Order, 1925, in which there are embodied, in Art. 7(1), a number of qualifications which are required before the High Commissioner [for Palestine] may grant a certificate of naturalisation.
The 1925 Citizenship Order as a whole (not only the Order’s naturalization provisions) constituted the domestic, or the concrete, execution of Article 7 of the Mandate.682 But the Court’s reference to Article 7(1) of the Order (regarding naturalization) and its connection with the said Article 7 of the Mandate, implied that the naturalization of Jews was deemed to be the key subject of the Order in the eyes of its drafters, however important other provisions might have been.
From the outset, the naturalization provisions of the Palestinian Citizenship Order were framed to grant Palestinian nationality, in an organized manner, to foreign Jews would immigrate into Palestine. To this effect, shortly after the enactment of the Order in 1925, the British Government admitted:
680 See, for example, the following minutes of the Permanent Mandates Commission: 1926, op. cit., p. 171; 1927, op. cit., p. 128; 1929, op. cit., p. 100; 1933, op. cit., p. 106; 1935, op. cit., p. 52. 681
Op. cit.
The qualifications for naturalization are simple: two years’ residence in Palestine out of the three years preceding application, good character, and the declared intention to settle in Palestine; knowledge of Hebrew is accepted under the literacy qualification. In special cases the High Commissioner is empowered to grant naturalization even if the period of residence has not been within the three years preceding application. Special naturalization offices have already been opened in Jerusalem, Haifa and Tiberias; and an officer is visiting the Jewish agricultural settlements in the north [of Palestine] to receive applications on the spot.683
In fact, as it has been demonstrated above,684 the British-run Government of Palestine had involved Jewish leaders in the drafting process of the Palestinian Citizenship Order of 1925. Officially, the Jewish Agency and the Zionist Organization were in favour of naturalizing Jews in Palestine. The increased number of Jews who applied for naturalization in 1935, for example, was a result of, inter alia, “the campaign of the several Jewish representative institutions to encourage naturalization among members of the Jewish community [of Palestine]”.685 More specifically, in 1936, the British Government reported:
[T]he [Jewish] General Council (Vaad Leumi) conducted an energetic campaign for the naturalisation as Palestinian citizens of Jewish immigrants, who are qualified therefore by residence, and gave much assistance to the Department of Migration in the acceptance of applications for certificates of citizenship under the Palestinian Citizenship Order, 1925.686
Yet not all immigrant Jews had individually applied for naturalization. At the end of 1936, the Palestine Royal Commission reported that out of 292,000 Jews
683
Report on the Administration of Palestine 1925, op. cit., p. 74. See also the following reports of the British Government: Report to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of
Palestine and Trans-Jordan, 1930 (hereinafter: ‘Report on the Administration of Palestine 1930’),
pp. 58-61; Report to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and
Trans-Jordan, 1936 (hereinafter: ‘Report on the Administration of Palestine 1936’), p. 44; Report to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan, 1938
(hereinafter: ‘Report on the Administration of Palestine 1938), p. 89. 684
See text accompanying notes 475-476. 685
Report on the Administration of Palestine 1935, op. cit., p. 69. 686 Report on the Administration of Palestine 1936, op. cit., p. 44.
qualifying for Palestinian nationality, “about 166,000 had acquired Palestinian citizenship and the remaining 126,000 or about 43 per cent of the qualified population, were not Palestinian citizens”.687 The reason for this, according to the same Commission, was:
The Jews have not availed themselves readily of the opportunity afforded them of becoming Palestinian citizens and this is accounted for by the fact that their chief interest is in the Jewish community itself and allegiance to Palestine and to the Government [of Palestine] are minor considerations to many of them.688
In collaboration with the Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, in a wider context, Britain made and employed immigration laws in order to bring Jews into Palestine,689 supporting their settlement in the country, and ultimately naturalizing them therein.690 The systematic, publicly declared, collaboration between Britain
687 Royal Commission Report, op. cit., p. 332. As mentioned above (text accompanying note 677) the Government of Palestine reported that the total number of persons who had acquired Palestinian citizenship by naturalization during the period from August 1925 to September 1945 was 132,616 individuals. The divergence between the above-quoted figure of 1936 and this one is due, perhaps, to whether the reported numbers included children or wives of the naturalized men and whether the provisionally naturalized persons before August 1925 were included or not.
688
Royal Commission Report, op. cit., p. 332. For the same conclusion, see Permanent Mandates Commission, Minutes of the Thirteenth Session, League of Nations, Geneva, 1928, p. 52. According to the Zionist Organization, in 1932, “Of the 174,610 Jews enumerated in the Census, 100,704 declared themselves to be of Palestinian citizenship, while 7,902 had filed applications for such citizenship”. Zionist Organization, Memorandum of the Development of the Jewish National Home
submitted to the Secretary General of the League of Nations, London, April, 1933, p. 4.
689 With regard to the rule of the Jewish Agency in matters of immigration and naturalization, see the following memoranda (all prepared by the Jewish Agency, London, and sent to the League of Nations and entitled as follows: “Memorandum on the Development of the Jewish National Home, [the year] Submitted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations for the Information of the Permanent Mandates Commission”): October 1924, pp. 16-19; June 1928, pp. 3-9; August 1932, pp. 3-12; April 1933, pp. 5-11; April 1936, pp. 3-9.
690 See Immigration Ordinance, 1933 (Laws of Palestine, p. 849). This Ordinance abrogated and consolidated the provisions of the Immigration Ordinances, 1923-1924. See also Immigration Ordinance, 1941 (Palestine Gazette, No. 1082, Supplement 1, 6 March 1941, p. 6). According to the Immigration Regulations, which were enacted in accordance with the Immigration Ordinances, it was possible for the ‘Palestine Zionist Executive’ to request immigration permissions for groups of persons to come to Palestine. See Article 4(1), Article 7(4) and Article 8 of the Immigration Regulations, 1933 (annexed to the Immigration Ordinance, 1933) and Annex 5 thereof (application form to be submitted by the Palestine Zionist Executive for permission to bring immigrants into Palestine). See also Article 2 of the Immigration (Amendment) Rules, 1935 (Palestine Gazette, No. 500, Supplement 2, 28 March 1935, p. 310) and the annexed form thereof (entry visa to Palestine by the Jewish Agency to immigrant Jews).
and the Zionist/Jewish representatives was recognized in Article 4 of the Palestine Mandate:
An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognised as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine…. The Zionist organization… shall be recognised as such agency....
Thus, as the British Government stated in its report to the League of Nations in 1925, while “the regulations under the Immigration Ordinance, 1925, set up a statutory procedure for the introduction of Jewish immigrant labour into Palestine”,691 “the Palestinian Citizenship Order in Council, 1925, facilitates the acquisition of Palestinian nationality by persons settling in the country”.692
As a declaratory formulation to the pre-existing practice in Palestine, a special naturalization article was added to the Citizenship Order to serve a specific group of Jews who were already residing in the country.693 Those Jews who were temporarily naturalized in order to participate in the legislative election of 1922,694 and who had habitually resided in Palestine since then, were finally deemed to be Palestinians in 1925. In this respect, Article 5(1) of the Citizenship Order reads:
Persons who have made a declaration of their intention to opt for Palestinian citizenship in accordance with Article 2 of the Palestine Legislative Council Election Order, 1922, and have received provisional certificates of Palestinian citizenship… shall… be deemed to be entitled to acquire Palestinian citizenship.695
691
Report on the Administration of Palestine 1925, op. cit., p. 66. 692 Ibid.
693 See Feinberg, op. cit., p. 50.
694
See above text accompanying notes 366-374. 695
For the procedures to acquire Palestinian nationality under this article, see Palestinian Citizenship Regulations of 1925, Article 3, and Annex 1, Form 1 attached thereof.
Although this provision did not mention ‘Jews’, the British Government had confirmed that “Article 5 of the Order facilitates the acquisition of citizenship by Jews who opted therefore under Article 2 of the Palestine Legislative Council Election Order in Council, 1922”.696 Moreover, “special facilities have been granted to Jewish students resident abroad to obtain citizenship, if qualified, without being required to present themselves in person [at the Immigration Department] at Jerusalem”.697 Article 13 of the Palestinian Citizenship Regulations, 1925,698 materialized this practice by authorizing British consuls abroad to grant Palestinian nationality to Jewish students.699
Consequently, the vast majority of naturalized foreigners in Palestine were Jews, with minor exceptions. In 1931, for example, the British Government told the League of Nations that out of “the 17,477 individuals and families, representing about 27,000 souls, who have acquired the Palestinian citizenship under Articles 5, 7, and 9 of the [Citizenship] Order in Council, nearly 95 per cent are Jews”.700 Another 1946-conducted official survey estimated the naturalization of non-Jews throughout the mandate period to be “approximately 1% of the total”.701 Immigrants arrived in Palestine from some 61 countries;702 the vast majority came
696 Report on the Administration of Palestine 1925, op. cit., p. 74. See also Attorney-General v.
Goralschwili and Another, op. cit. (provisional certificates of special Palestinian nationality).
697 Report on the Administration of Palestine 1932, op. cit., p. 43.
698
Op. cit.
699 Cf. the treatment of Palestinian natives residing abroad, above Chapter V, Section 2.
700 British Government, Report to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of
Palestine and Trans-Jordan, 1931, p. 40. Cf. Report on Palestine Administration 1922, op. cit., p.
53.
701 Survey of Palestine, Vol. I, p. 208.
702 Legally, the presence of such a large number of foreigners in Palestine resulted in an ample amount of case law related to the conflict of laws in personal status matters, such as marriage, divorce, maintenance, will, and succession. In 1947, one writer gathered 388 cases decided by Palestinian courts throughout the mandate on such matters (Vitta, op. cit., pp. XV-XXIII). These cases form a rich source of jurisprudence in the field of private international law. As Palestine’s legal system was influenced by the Common Law system, such judicial precedents significantly contributed to the law-making in that particular field of law.
from twenty-five European states.703 The admission of foreigners into Palestine, including by immigration, will be addressed in greater detail later in this study.704
Lastly, an intensified process to naturalize Jewish soldiers serving in the British forces in Palestine had been carried out, especially during and after World War II. This process started on 19 November 1940, when Britain amended the Palestinian Citizenship Order for the purpose of naturalizing foreign persons serving in the British army.705 This Order was followed by a series of regulations to the same effect.706 Such naturalization continued through the latter stages of the war and thereafter towards the end of the mandate.707
This policy coincided with the end of the mandate and with a number of international proposals to solve the Palestine question by establishing two states, Jewish and Arab, in that country. Individuals who were present in Palestine and participated in the military service of the British forces were overwhelmingly Jews.708 Thus, the apparent purpose of naturalizing Jewish soldiers was to strengthen the army of the projected Jewish state.709 It was estimated that the
703 See Survey of Palestine, Vol. I, pp. 204-205. It seems that the Jewish refugee problem in Europe in the inter-war period (1919-1939) encouraged Jewish immigration into Palestine. See Israel B. Brodie, The Refugee Problem and Palestine, The American Economic Commission for Palestine, New York, 1938; John Hope Simpson, Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, His Majesty’s Stationary Office, London, 1930; Jewish Agency for Palestine, Palestine: Land
Settlement, Urban Development and Immigration, London, 1930. See also Palestine Royal
Commission Report, op. cit., pp. 279-307; British Government, Report to the Council of the League
of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan, 1934 (hereinafter: ‘Report on the
Administration of Palestine 1934’), pp. 28-45. 704 See below Chapter IX.
705
See Palestinian Citizenship (Amendment) Order of 1940. 706
See Palestinian Citizenship (Amendment) Regulations of 12 March 1942; Palestinian Citizenship (Amendment) Regulations of 18 June 1942; Palestinian Citizenship (Amendment) Regulations (No. 2), 1942 of 3 December 1942. For judicial implementation, see Albert Schutz v. Commissioner for
Migration and Statistics, op. cit. (13 May 1942).
707 See Palestinian Citizenship (Amendment) Regulations, 1944; Palestinian Citizenship (His Majesty’s Forces) (Amendment) Regulations of 21 June 1945; Palestinian Citizenship (His Majesty’s Forces) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations of 6 September 1945.
708
See, in some detail, Esco Foundation for Palestine, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 1020-1035. 709 On the Jewish army’s proposal starting as early as 1944; see ibid., pp. 1029-1035.
number of Jews who participated in the British forces during World War II in Palestine amounted to approximately 27,000 men: seven-thousand regular soldiers and twenty-thousand volunteers.710 “In addition… there were… 35,000 Civil Defence Workers. There were also about 1,500 Jews from Palestine and the Middle East in the R.A.F. [Royal Air Forces]…. In addition… 15,000 were serving as special policemen in Palestine”.711 As a result, it was proposed that “a Jewish Army consisting of 200,000 Palestinian and stateless Jews”712 to be created.713 It seems, therefore, that these naturalized soldiers had later become part of the Israel army. In brief, the naturalization process in Palestine constituted the chosen formula for increasing the number of Jews in the country and legalizing their presence by conferring Palestinian nationality on them. (As already seen, in mid-1925, the number of Jews who were Ottoman subjects and who then became natural Palestinian citizens did not exceed 1% out of the total, overwhelmingly Arab, population of Palestine.)714 For this reason, some writers concluded that the Palestine Mandate, including its nationality article and therefore the entire Citizenship Order of 1925, is internationally invalid. It was said:715
‘Jewish People’ of the world who on the 24th of July, 1922, when this mandate was confirmed by the Council of the League, were not the ‘community formally belonging
710 See Norman Bentwich, “The Mandated Territories under the Second World War”, The British
Year Book of International Law, 1944, p. 165.
711
Esco Foundation for Palestine, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 1028.
712 Ibid., pp. 1029-1030. Such Jewish army “was to be composed about half of Palestinian Jews… and about half of stateless Jews. There were 100,000 Jews in Palestine and the Middle East among whom were trained and experienced fighters, and another 100,000 [non-Palestinian] Jews… who were anxious to join the Jewish Army” (ibid., p. 1033).
713 Officially, it was in September 1944 that the British Government approved that the Jewish soldiers in Palestine to form part of the British forces therein. See ibid., pp. 1034-1035.
714
See above text accompanying notes 527-529. 715 Boustany, op. cit., pp. 19-20.
to the Turkish Empire’716 and were in no sense a community of the territory of Palestine.717
Be that as it may, naturalization in Palestine had achieved its objective. Immigrant Jews who became Palestinian citizens by naturalization, among other actors, had succeeded in creating the State of Israel (i.e. the ‘Jewish national home’) in Palestine by 1948. Upon the establishment of Israel, Jewish Palestinians were converted into Israel citizens and ceased to be Palestinians; foreign Jews who were residing in Palestine became Israel citizens as well.718 The status of these ex- Palestinians after 1948 is beyond the scope of the present study.719
716
This quotation is extracted from Article 22, paragraph 4, of the Covenant of the League of Nations.
717 Emphasis in original. For other reasons, see also Boustany, op. cit., pp. 17-37; Cattan, op. cit., pp. 63-68. Cf. Stoyanovsky, op. cit., pp. 61-69 (based his argument on what he called the ‘historical connection of the Jewish People with Palestine’) and, more generally, Bentwich, Palestine, op. cit., pp. 188-205. Whatever the argument might be, the discussion here is concerned with the practical effects of naturalization as it was implemented under the British rule. The question of ‘Jewish nationality’ has been discussed in detail in W.T. Mallison, Jr., “Zionist-Israel Juridical Claims to Constitute the Jewish People Nationality Entity and to Confer Membership in It: Appraisal in Public International Law”, George Washington Law Review, Vol. 32, 1963-1964, pp. 983-1075.
718
All Jews who were residing permanently in Palestine, both Palestinian citizens and foreign immigrants, acquired Israel citizenship after the establishment of Israel on 15 May 1948. Article 4 of the Israel Law of Return of 6 July 1950 (Laws Concerning Nationality, p. 263) gave every Jew who came to the country as a permanent immigrant the right to obtain an immigration certificate. Article 2(a) of the Israel Nationality Law of 1 April 1952 (op. cit.), considered every immigrant under the Law of Return of 1950 as an Israel citizen. In particular, Article 2(b)(1) of the latter law regarded any immigrant Jew who entered Palestine before the establishment of Israel as an Israel citizen.