periods.49 Israel, with its creation, effectively, even if not formally, nullified the 1925 Palestinian Citizenship Order-in-Council, a British law that created the legal status of Palestinian citizenship in Mandatory Palestine.50 Israel’s decision to discontinue Palestinian citizenship was an act of affirming Jewish independence and proclaiming sovereignty. It signified the end of British authority over Palestine. Nullifying Palestinian citizenship was also an act of erasure. It was aimed at severing the legal ties and claims that Palestinians had to Palestine, thereby undermining their right of return. At the same time, Israel did not rush to create its own national citizenship. This legal lacuna affected both Jewish settlers and Palestinian natives, albeit in different ways. It prevented the issuance of Israeli passports and the extension of diplomatic protection, compromised inheritance rights, and made the signing of extradition treaties impossible.51 The absence of an Israeli citizenship especially affected stateless Jews, predominantly European Jews who had lost their citizenship as a result of the Holocaust, as they were effectively without status. On the Palestinian side, after having enjoyed a formal legal status under both the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, all Palestinians—both refugees and those who remained in territories under Israeli control—became stateless and status-less.52 The Palestinians who did manage to remain in their homeland became vulnerable targets for expulsion and deportation. For them, the acquisition of Israeli citizenship was a matter of sumud (steadfastness), a term that refers to Palestinian resistance and survival under conditions of Zionist/Israeli colonization and oppression. Israel’s inaugural elections, which took place in January 1949, constituted the first significant moment at which Israel had to deal with the status of the Palestinians who remained in the territories it controls. Suffrage was the main question with which it grappled. Israeli leaders decided to extend voting rights to the Palestinians under their rule, thus making Israel the only settler state to grant suffrage rights to (some of) its indigenous population from its very first parliamentary elections. Robinson attributes the decision to international constraints. With Israel having emerged as a settler colonial state in the mid-twentieth century, she argues, its leaders wanted international recognition at a historical moment of emerging human rights norms and a consolidating liberal order. Israel thus sought to be admitted as a UN member state. When its first bid for membership in the UN failed in 1948, Israel submitted a second. Fears of another failure, Robinson argues, 18 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3533490