of meeting the strict requirements of Israel’s 1952 Nationality Law and have therefore been effectively denationalized. The Right of Return in Humanitarian Law The right of return is also anchored in humanitarian law, the body of law regulating what states are permitted to do during war. Both the Hague Regulations annexed to the 1907 Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (which are universally recognized, including by Israel, to have achieved customary status by 1939) and the 1949 Geneva Civilians Convention (to which Israel is a signatory) provide for the right of return of displaced persons to their homes following the cessation of hostilities. The provisional government of Israel (through responsibility for its army and the Zionist paramilitary forces which preceded it) was fully bound by the rules of humanitarian law when Zionist forces unilaterally embarked upon the enterprise of trying to establish a state through military means. Palestinian communities were progressively displaced in 1948 as Zionist/Israeli forces established successive “zones of military occupation” as they gained control over specific geographical areas. The “General” Right of Return in Humanitarian Law Under humanitarian law, there is a general right of return, which applies to all displaced persons, irrespective of how they came to be displaced during the period of conflict. This rule was first codified in Article 43 of the Hague Regulations (and incorporated into all subsequent customary humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions and their related Protocols). According to this rule, a belligerent occupant must preserve the legal and social status quo in the occupied territory to the maximum extent possible, pending the final legal resolution of the conflict (i.e., a peace agreement). The content of the rule of Article 43, which is broader in the official (French) version than in the unofficial English translation, means, in practical terms, that a belligerent occupant must let the population continue its normal existence with a minimum of interference. This would logically include a requirement that the local population be permitted to remain in, or return to, their place of origin following the cessation of hostilities. While the Hague Regulations do not specifically articulate the obligation of a state to repatriate (i.e., allow to exercise their right of return) civilian residents of the territory who may have become temporarily displaced during the conflict, the entire purpose of the Hague Regulations – as is clearly stated in the Preamble to the Hague Convention – and indeed of all humanitarian law generally is to mitigate the severity of war as much as possible and to spare the local inhabitants to the maximum extent possible.[24] Accordingly, it must be logically obvious that the rule of humanitarian law requiring the repatriation of prisoners of war following the cessation of hostilities (which is stated in Article 20 of the Hague Regulations) must necessarily include a rule requiring the repatriation of civilian residents to their place of origin following the cessation of hostilities. The sources of the right of return in the Fourth Geneva Convention are Article 4, Article 6(4) and Article 158(3). Article 4 defines protected persons who are covered by the Convention. The definition of protected persons covers all habitual residents of a territory who may have become temporarily displaced from their place of origin during the conflict (for whatever reason), and provision for their repatriation has been made in two separate articles of the Convention. The first repatriation provision appears in Article 6(4), which covers the end dates of the applicability of the Convention. Specifically, Article 6(4) states that the Convention shall remain in