be naturalized from afar. Under the 1952 law, to qualify for Israeli citizenship through residence, Palestinians have to have been inhabitants of 1948 territories by March 1, 1952, and they have to have remained inhabitants from the day the state was established until the day the nationality law was passed. None of the Palestinians expelled in 1948 qualify under this provision. In Defense of the Right to Palestinian Nationality The global population of Palestinian nationals who, since the Treaty of Lausanne, have had a legally recognized “genuine link” to the territory of colonized Palestine and, therefore, to belong to it as nationals, can stake claims to these rights from across the diaspora through different legal and political channels. That is, their birth and blood rights to Palestinian nationality remain intact, and a legal and political avenue to challenge the Israeli regime is still viable. Indeed, their predecessors who were denied Palestinian nationality through citizenship during Britain’s occupation of Palestine were aware of this. Throughout the British mandate, Palestinians in Palestine and abroad repeatedly protested British policies through petitions submitted to the Government of Palestine and to the League of Nations. On February 23, 1927, for example, a group of Palestinians in Monterrey, Mexico, authored a six-page petition addressed to the high commissioner for Palestine, Herbert Plumer. In the document, which was drafted by members of the Centro Social Palestino and signed by over 300 Palestinians residing in Mexico, the petitioners demanded Britain recognize their rights to Palestinian nationality. They threatened to resort to the League of Nations, the arbiter of international law: We were born in that territory; have always wished to be Palestinians; and we are sure, if as a last resort, it shall become necessary to carry our petition before the League of Nations, that august body will grant us the right to consider ourselves 7 The Case for Palestinian Nationality www.al-shabaka.org the palestinian policy network