Nationality and Cases of Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa 3.2.3. Refusal to naturalise Palestinians The on-going struggle for a full-fledged Palestinian state and the dispersal of several million Palestinian refugees across the MENA region (in particular Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Egypt), forms the backdrop for an interesting anomaly in naturalisation policy: the deliberate exclusion of an identified group from access to nationality. In 1965, the League of Arab States adopted an agreement – commonly known as the “Casablanca Protocol” – which set out certain rules for the treatment by these states of Palestinians on their territory. The Protocol provides for the enjoyment of rights relating to employment, freedom of movement and travel documents by Palestinians, while “retaining their Palestinian nationality”. Thus, although not explicitly provided for in the Protocol, a policy of non-naturalisation of Palestinians is widely seen as derived from this agreement. It is informed by the widely-held belief that to grant nationality to Palestinians in their country of exile would be to undermine their right of return and their claim to their original homeland.142 While it is true that a solution to the Palestinians’ statelessness depends largely on 142 - See, for instance, A. Kassim, “The Palestinians. From Hyphenated to Integrated Citizenship” 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. 106