nationals of Palestine. When it came to Palestinian nationality, Palestinian petitioners regularly referenced article 34 of the Treaty of Lausanne, reminding British authorities of their obligation to abide by international law—or, in the least, the treaties to which they were signatories. In June 1927, for example, a delegation of Palestinian nationalists from Bethlehem and Beit Jala that formed the Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Palestinians Residing in Foreign Countries, presented a petition to the Government of Palestine in Jerusalem. They situated Palestinian migrants’ rights to Palestinian nationality within article 34 of the treaty: The logical conclusion to be deduced from the stipulations of the article is that the emigrants of this land who belong to the majority, enjoy the right to Palestinian nationality. We do not for a moment consider that the British Government would want to deprive them of this right. Palestinian petitioners in Palestine and abroad set a precedent for demanding justice based on international legal treaties, and the British mandate regime continually disregarded them with impunity for the duration of its occupation of Palestine. Seizing on Statehood and the Treaty of Lausanne Until 2012, when the UN recognized Palestine as a de jure sovereign state, Palestinians in exile had limited resources to claim Palestinian nationality. But with statehood, the PLO finally drafted a citizenship law in 2012 recognizing the conferral of Palestinian nationality based on the Treaty of Lausanne, including for Palestinians in exile: “Palestinian citizens are those persons who acquired or had the right to acquire Palestinian nationality as of 6 August 1924.” However, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) never considered the law due to the legal complexities involved; namely, identifying how Palestinian citizenship would be conferred on a fragmented population of refugees across the world, and of 8 The Case for Palestinian Nationality www.al-shabaka.org the palestinian policy network