The International Law Foundations of Palestinian Nationality

Qafisheh (law, Birzeit U., Palestine) has three main objectives for this study of the international legal status of Palestinian nationality under the British mandate (1920-1948). First is simply to fill the academic gap in the literature. Secondly, he seeks to identify the international legal status for Palestinian nationality and how it stood at the end of the mandate, as he argues that any serious juridical consideration of the question of Palestinian nationality for individuals today, including Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens, the inhabitants of the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, and the Palestinian refugees, should be rooted in the status of nationality at the end of the mandate and that such acts as Israel's Nationality Law of 1952 or the Jordanian Nationality Law of 1952 have produced merely de facto status changes according to international law that only apply within their respective domestic jurisdictions. He also hopes to provide guidance to Palestinian policy makers regarding the substantive provisions of any future nationality legislation regarding: the treatment of previous nationality legislation which had been valid in Palestine, the jus sanguinis and jus soli bases of a new nationality law, naturalization by residence, the recovery of Palestinian nationality for those displaced in 1948, and the nationality of women and children. To this end, certain substantive provisions of the Ottoman Nationality Law of 1869 and the Palestinian Citizenship Order of 1925 are discussed in some detail and compared to the nationality legislation of other states. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Mutaz M. Qafisheh, a Palestinian-French lawyer, holds a Ph.D. degree (2007) in international law, with distinction, from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva. He teaches at the Faculty of Law, Al-Quds University, Jerusalem, and manages an international program to enhance legal education of Palestinian law schools. Until recently (2001–2008) he worked as a Human Rights Officer at the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Ramallah, Geneva and Beirut. He was previously employed as Director of a project on Palestinian Security Sector Reform, as a Legal Advisor for the Palestinian Parliament and as a Legal Researcher at Birzeit University, Palestine. His academic specialization includes human rights, refugee law, humanitarian law, private international law, Palestinian and Middle East law.