Colonial Legacies in Syrian Nationality Law THE DEPRIVATION OF THE RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE KURDS AND PALESTINIANS Colonial policies have deprived both Kurds and Palestinians of their right to selfdetermination, leaving them stateless and vulnerable to forced expulsion. Prior to the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, around 300,000 Kurds and more than 550,000 Palestinian refugees living in Syria were de jure stateless. 157 Although Kurds and Palestinians are both ‘a people without a country’, 158 their legal status in Syrian legislation differs significantly. This section proceeds to analyse the responsibility of colonialism in creating statelessness among Palestinians and Kurds, and their legal status in Syrian citizenship. A British Support for Zionism and the Creation of Statelessness among Palestinians The roots of the Palestinian refugee problem are to be found in British colonial policies. After Britain entered and occupied Palestine, under the legal approval of the League of Nations, colonial authorities began organising and facilitating the mass immigration of Jews from Europe, in an effort to fulfil the Zionist political project. 159 Britain promised in the 1917 Balfour Declaration to create a Jewish state in Palestine, 160 without consulting native populations. In 1947, the United Nations presented a partition plan to create a Zionist State in Palestine, which would allocate only 45% of the land to Palestinians although they owed 93% of it. 161 Native Palestinians and Arab neighbouring states strongly rejected this proposal, which they saw as a continuity of colonialism, and a war broke out as a result. 162 The new state of Israel, militarily and politically supported by Britain and France, won the 1947–48 conflict and forcibly expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their homes — which represented around 85% of the indigenous population of former British Mandate Palestine. 163 The majority of them were internally displaced or sought refuge in the neighbouring countries of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. 164 This event is known in the Palestinian consciousness as the ‘Nakba’ — literally ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic — and marked the beginning of their forced exile and statelessness that still remains unresolved to this day. 165 It also marked the beginning of the dispersal of the Palestinian community and their political 157 McGee (n 5). 158 Gerard Chaliand, People without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan (Zed Press 1982). 159 Alexander Scholch, ‘Britain in Palestine, 1838–1882: The Roots of the Balfour Policy’ (1992) 22(1) Journal of Palestine Studies 39. 160 Walid Khalid, ‘The Hebrew Reconquista of Palestine: From the 1947 United Nations Partition 161 162 163 164 165 Resolution to the First Zionist Congress of 1897’ (2009) 39(1) Journal of Palestine Studies 24. Avi Shlaim, ‘By Recognising Palestine, Britain Can Help Right the Wrongs of the Balfour Declaration’, Balfour Project (online, 2020) <https://balfourproject.org/right-the-wrongs/>. Michael E Dumper, Palestinian Refugee Repatriation: Global Perspectives (Routledge 2006) 2. Francesca Albanese and Lex Takkenberg, The Status of Palestinian Refugees in International Law (Oxford University Press 2020). ibid. Ahmad H Sa’di, ‘Catastrophe, Memory and Identity: Al-Nakbah as a Component of Palestinian Identity’ (2002) 7(2) Israel Studies 175. 23