Lana Tatour law erased the history and identity of native Jews as Palestinians and their relation to the territory as Palestinians or Arabs. Instead, native Jews were re-indigenized as belonging to the territory through the Law of Return—an immigration law, in its essence—even though they had never immigrated. When it came to Palestinians, the law structured citizenship as territorially bound and temporally restricted. At the same time, Israel’s citizenship regime unbounds Palestinians from the territory through their production as alien to it. While settler indigenization is a common feature in all settler colonial contexts, Israel is unique in its systematic denial of the indigeneity of the native population.105 The Citizenship Law embodies that rationale, taking as a premise the production of Palestinian natives as aliens, foreigners, and invaders. If the Law of Return frames the Jewish right to the land and citizenship in historic terms, the Citizenship Law is ahistorical. It did not extend Palestinians citizenship by virtue of their indigeneity or their long history of residence in Palestine. Their right to citizenship was not a natural right. Instead, it referred to their citizenship as a discretionary gesture, a reflection of the settler state’s generosity. The notion of Palestinian citizenship as gesture guided the discussion on the Citizenship Law in the cabinet, the Knesset, and the legislative committee. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Maimon, the minister of religions, for example, argued that “every Jew is a citizen. This is not, however, the case for the gentile . . . [A]ll the others need to acquire a citizenship.”106 Similarly, during a meeting of the legislative committee, a member of the Knesset, Yaacov Klivnov, stated that “foreigners can be extended citizenship only by gesture.”107 Israeli jurisprudence echoed this sentiment. In a Supreme Court decision from the early 1950s, Justice Shneor Heshin determined that a civil identification card offers no legal protection per se, since the Palestinian presence in the country is based on inhabitancy by benevolent gesture.108 While Jewish citizenship was equated to birthright citizenship, the citizenship of Palestinians was governed by the logic of naturalization. Indeed, Ben Gurion referred to the Citizenship Law as the naturalization law. His choice of words captured the spirit behind the law. The entitlement of Palestinians to citizenship, unlike that of Jews, was not unconditional. It was regulated in section 3 of the Citizenship Law (citizenship by residence), which specifically applied to Palestinians. Israeli lawmakers referred to section 3 as automatic citizenship and they distinguished it from section 5 (citizenship by naturalization). Nonetheless, section 3 was a form of naturalization and 29 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3533490