as of 2013. Thus, many Lebanese Bedouin remain stateless (Chatty et al. 2013, 415). Some Lebanese-born individuals are potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness regardless of their ethnic group. If Lebanese parents do not register a child’s birth within a year, they must petition courts to recognize the child’s nationality. In addition, Lebanese women cannot pass on nationality to their children, rendering children who cannot acquire nationality from their father stateless (ISI 2014. 108). The exact number of the stateless in Lebanon today is unknown, although 200,000 has been estimated as an upper bound (ibid.). The Tebu are a tribe from the border area of Libya and Chad. They were subject to significant discrimination by Ghadafi’s policies of Arabization and many were rendered stateless (Van Waas 2013, 5). Under Ghadafi, many Tebu were evicted and forced to relocate, and many were registered in the Aouzou strip close to the Libya-Chad border. In the 1970s, the Libyan military attempted to seize the Aouzou strip from Chad. When the International Court of Justice granted Aouzou to Chad, the Ghadafi regime issued an edict in 1996 declaring that all Tebu registered in Aouzou were foreign, regardless of whether they had acquired Chadian nationality. In 2007, Libyan authorities began to rescind the Tebus’ citizenship. Even after the Libyan Civil War of 2011, the citizenship of the Tebu remains contested (Van Waas 2013, 12). A representative of the Tebu community in Libya recently stated that roughly 50,000 Tebu reside in Libya. An unknown share of this population is stateless (ibid.). Libyan-born Tebu are thus potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness. Palestinians constitute an ethnically- and religiously-diverse group with ancestral ties to Palestine. Since the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, Palestinians have experienced mass displacement. Palestinians live in many states and territories throughout the world. Their access to nationality is determined by the policies of the states in which they reside. Globally, the bulk of Palestinians live in states and territories that deny them citizenship (ISI 2014, 127-129; Shiblak 2006). Palestinians from the Israeli-occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip may be de jure stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness if they have not acquired citizenship in their country of residence. While once Jordanian nationals, these Palestinians lost Jordanian citizenship when Jordan disengaged from the West Bank in 1988. In addition, Israel bars Palestinian residents of these territories from acquiring Israeli citizenship (Shiblak 2006, 8).39 In addition, many 39 Most individuals residing in the West Bank and Gaza who were born in Palestine to Palestinian parents qualify for Palestinian Authority (PA)-issued passports and possess political rights within those territories. PA passports function as travel documents and do not convey citizenship (Khalil 2007, 28-29). In order to obtain a PA passport, individuals must be registered in Palestine’s Population Registry as residents of these territories by Israeli authorities. Most Palestinians born outside of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are ineligible for PA passports. While the United Nations recognizes Palestine as a state, and despite the fact that the PA can confer travel and political rights to West Bank and Gaza residents, the Palestinian government lacks a formal nationality law and cannot grant de jure citizenship to its residents (Migration Policy Centre 2013). Moreover, many countries, including the United States, do not recognize the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority and thus cannot directly deport holders of Palestinian travel documents to the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. 21

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