Zahra Albarazi emergence of new states after the colonial era left huge problems in terms of the formation of state citizenries. 13 2.2. Palestine and Israel Alongside colonialism, one of the most substantial occurrences that would have a lasting effect on nationality systems across the region was the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Amidst the various other consequences the creation of this new state brought to the region, there were two other major ones: 1. the regulation and perception of the nationality of those living in Israel and Palestine and how it affected nationality questions for those living in, migrating to and displaced from Israel and Palestine, and, 2. the spill-over influence on the regulation of nationality by other states in the region Firstly, after the creation of the state of Israel, a new nationality policy was needed to establish who would comprise the new state’s citizenry. The approach adopted by Israel had the effect of including many individuals who had no physical links to the territory of Israel (i.e. had not been born or were not resident there but who had migrated from abroad), whilst excluding many who did. In effect, the nationality policy of Israel operated to exclude many non-Jews with links to the territory - Palestinian Christians and Muslims who had ancestral links to the region. What it did in return to create its citizenry with a Jewish identity was to bring in persons from across the world to make them nationals under the concept of Aliyah, which is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora - wherever in the world they live - to the Land of Israel, and who are given immediate citizenship. The provisions allowing Aliyah are still in place in Israeli nationality law today, where any Jewish person in the world could immigrate to Israel and become immediate citizens.14 To highlight this, due to the policy of Jewish return under the concept of Aliyah the region of Israel now hosts approximately 43% of the world’s Jewish population.15 Secondly, the massive displacement of the Palestinian population following upon the formation of Israel – just under one million people16 - has had significant ripple effects on nationality policy in the region as a whole. The large-scale and protracted displacement of Palestinians to the neighbouring states (and around the world) makes them one of the world’s most entrenched refugee populations. Today, the number of Palestinians registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is close to 5.5 million.17 The impact of the presence of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in countries like Jordan, Lebanon, 13 An other example is Lebanon, see vanWaas L, Citizenship, Statelessness and the Numbers Game in Lebanon , 2014 access at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2550734 14 Israel: Law No. 5710-1950, The Law of Return, 5 July 1950, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b4ea1b.html 15 DellaPergola, Sergio, Sheskin, Ira, eds. "World Jewish Population, 2014". Current Jewish Population Reports. The American Jewish Year Book (Dordrecht: Springer), 2014 16 McDowall, David; Claire Palley (1987). The Palestinians. Minority Rights Group Report no 24. p. 10. ISBN 0946690-42-1. 17 UNRWA is the UN body mandated to protect and assist Palestinian refugees. This figure does not include Palestinians living in countries where UNRWA does not work (such as Iraq and the Gulf). See ‘UNRWA in Figures’, available at: http://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/ files/2014_01_uif_-_english.pdf 4 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-Comp. 2017/3- © 2017 Author(s)