who were displaced during the Nakba years (1947-1948), their right to nationality and citizenship of a successor state, it persists in violating international law. Thus, Israel, which illegally revoked the Palestinian Citizenship Orders in its Nationality Law (1952) has denied the nationality of these Palestinians, as established by the Lausanne Treaty, a state of illegality that continues today (see Section 4, Stateless Persons and the Statelessness Conventions). In other words, Palestinians have been made de facto stateless persons within the meaning of the International Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness of 1961. Moreover, the conferment of Jordanian nationality to Palestinians residents of the West Bank and East Jerusalem by the Jordanian nationality law of 1954 has no effect in international law, as the annexation of the West Bank in 1949 was illegal. Moreover, as a matter of international legal consensus, since the Israeli occupation in 1967 and continuing today, the status of Palestinians who remained in the oPt, including those residing in Jerusalem, has not been resolved.30 Palestinians in the oPt are obliged to hold Israeli identification cards, while the Palestinian passport issued by the Palestinian Authority is no more than a symbolic travel document; its issuance is dependent on Israeli pre-approval, and its validity is dependent on the inclusion of an Israeli identification card number. In the face of this complex reality, whether the UN General Assembly’s recognition of Palestinian statehood on 29 November 2012 and its granting Observer Status to the State of Palestine makes a material difference to the stateless status of Palestinians remains to be determined. 31 2. Forced Displacement of Palestinians Palestinian refugees32 constitute one of the largest and longest-standing unresolved refugee groups in the world today.33 At the beginning of the 20th century, most Palestinians lived inside the borders of Palestine. This area is now divided into the State of Israel, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. The latter areas were occupied by Israel in 1967 and are known as the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). Palestinian refugees are defined as refugees vis-à-vis the State of Israel.34 Qafisheh, The International Law Foundations of Palestinian Nationality: A Legal Examination of Nationality in Palestine under Britain’s Rule, 212–217. 31 UN General Assembly, “Res. 67/19.” 32 “Palestinian refugee” is the common term used to designate all those Palestinians who have become and continue to be externally displaced. The term refers to the following three groups: (i) 1948 refugees under UNGA Resolution 194(III) (“Palestine Refugees” in UNRWA terminology, including both registered and non-registered refugees); (ii) 1967 refugees under UNSC Resolution 237 (“Displaced Persons” in UN terminology and used by UNRWA with particular reference to UNGA Resolution 2252); and (iii) Palestinians who are neither 1948 nor 1967 refugees who are unable or unwilling to return to Israel or the oPt owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. For more details on such categorization, refer to Section 3. Palestinians who fall under the scope of Article 1D Palestinians who fall under the scope of Article 1D. 33 Palestinian registered refugees make up almost a third of the global refugee population (5 million out of 16.7 million as of 2013); see UNHCR, “Global Trends 2013 - War’s Human Cost,” June 2014, 2, http://www.unhcr.org/5399a14f9.html. 34 BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Survey, 2010-2012, VII:xxi–xxii. 30 6 Handbook on Protection of Palestinian Refugees