British troops organize the arrival of a Jewish immigrant ship, Haifa, 1948 (Source:.nam.ac.uk) Ottoman Empire. On 24 July 1922, the League of Nations instituted the Mandate System, which entrusted the temporary administration of Palestine to Great Britain as a Class A Mandate – a categorization closest to independence.1 From a legal perspective, the final status of Palestine as a geopolitical territory was determined by the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923.2 The treaty also transformed the de facto status of Palestinians to de jure Palestinian nationality, defined as those persons who had been subjects of the Ottoman Empire and are now residing in the British Mandate of Palestine. Further, the enactment of the Palestinian Citizenship Order of 1925 legally codified Palestinian citizenship at the national level. As such, the status of Palestine as a defined sovereign territory and the status of the Palestinian people as a nationally identified people with a right to self-determination were legally well-established before the creation of Israel.3 The recognition of the Palestinian people, nonetheless, was undermined by the application of these same legislations, as well as others, which laid the foundations for the successful colonization of Mandatory Palestine by the Zionist movement, the mass displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian population (the Nakba), and the creation of the state of Israel. Correspondingly, the British Mandate’s policies that facilitated such Zionist domination and ensuing Palestinian forcible displacement included, inter alia: 1 2 3 2 Class A Mandates were designated for areas deemed to “have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone”. The Mandate for Palestine, 24 July 1922, is reprinted in A Survey of Palestine: Prepared in December 1945 and January 1945, vol I (The Institute for Palestine Studies 1991), 4–11. Treaty of Peace, signed at Lausanne (adopted 24 July 1923, entered into force 6 August 1924) B.E.-Fr.-It.-Jp.-Gr.-Tr., 28 UNTS 701 [hereinafter League of Nations, Lausanne Treaty] <https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/ LON/Volume%2028/v28.pdf> accessed 3 October 2022.. See BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (BADIL), Closing Protection Gaps: A Handbook on Protection of Palestinian Refugees in States Signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention (2nd edn, Al-Ayyam Press 2015), 2-6 [hereinafter BADIL, Closing Protection Gaps] <http://badil.org/en/publication/handbook-on-protection.html?do wnload=1129:handbook-2015> accessed 3 October 2022.