Regional Report on Citizenship: The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Egypt, Iraq and Syria18 on the rules regulating access to nationality in those states is significant. In many of these countries, because generation after generation were born there, Palestinians have come to make up a considerable percentage of the population.19This created demographic and challenges to services, in countries where a very delicate confessional balance existed and who have had limited infrastructure. In reaction to the influx of large numbers of displaced Palestinians, countries in the region adopted the Casablanca Protocol which set out certain rules for the treatment by these states of Palestinians on their territory and which, with a view to protecting the right of return for Palestinians stated that they should get various rights while “retaining their Palestinian nationality”. States in the region have interpreted this as excluding them from naturalisation. 20 The exclusion of Palestinians from naturalisation procedures therefore is evident in the practice of MENA states, although it is only Iraq that specifically excludes Palestinians as part of the letter of its law, saying that “Iraqi nationality shall not be granted to Palestinians as a guarantee to their right to return to their homeland”.21 Alongside the inability of Palestinian refugees to obtain any nationality, their presence has deeply affected the regulation and perception of nationality legislation for other populations too. As well as leaving Palestinians in a situation of intergenerational statelessness, their large presence in these countries also affects nationality legislation in less direct ways. Discrimination and exclusiveness in these nationality laws may be justified through the fear of Palestinians being able to naturalise. In Lebanon for example, the main justification (which is widely accepted by the population) of the prohibition on mothers to transmit their Lebanese nationality to their children is that it is needed to prevent the children of Palestinians married to Lebanese women from accessing Lebanese nationality.22 This idea is also present in Egypt where, when the removal of this same discrimination was enacted, Egyptian women married to Palestinian men were initially specifically excluded from the reform.23 The creation of Israel also effected the nationality of Jews in the neighbouring countries. After the creation of Israel, the situation of Jews who resided in many of the neighbouring countries changed. Some of them opted to leave their countries to live in Israel, and would become Israeli citizens. Thenceforth, some countries adopted denationalisation processes where those who emigrated would lose their nationality of origin. In other countries expropriations and denationalisation were implemented in order to make Jews leave.24 18 In 2010 – before the Syrian crisis – the number of Palestinian refugees registered in each country was: Jordan – 1.99 million; Lebanon – 455,000 and Syria – 496,000. See UNRWA, Statistics 2010, November 2011, available at: http://www.unrwa.org/userfiles/2011120434013.pdf. 19 For example in Jordan estimates are that 60% of the population are from Palestian origin, and in http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/jordan-and-palestine, and just under half a million live in Lebanon see UNRWA, Where we work, 2014 access at https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/lebanon 20 A. Kassim, “The Palestinians. From Hyphenated to Integrated Nationality” in Citizenshi and the State in the Middle East. Approaches and Applications, N. Butenschon, U. Davis and M. Hassassian (eds), Syracuse University Press, 2000; A. Shiblak, “Stateless Palestinians” in Forced Migration Review, Issue 26, September 2006. 21 Article 6(2) of Iraq nationality law of 2006 22 See The Lancet, Lebanese perceptions of citizenship rights for children of Lebanese mothers and Palestinian fathers: a cross-sectional survey, Volume 390, S7, 2017. 23 This exclusion was later removed from the law. Some data on the number of children of Egyptian women and Palestinian men to benefit from the new policy over the course of 2011, as well as details of some of the difficulties in terms of the implementation of this policy, are available at http://eudo-nationality.eu/nationality-news/530-newpolicy-on-egyptian-nationality-for-children-of-palestinian-fathers. 24 For more information on this situation please see Carole Basri, The Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: An Examination of Legal Rights - A Case Study of the Human Rights Violations of Iraqi Jews, 26 Fordham Int'l L.J. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-Comp. 2017/3- © 2017 Author(s) 5