Palestinians residing in East Jerusalem are ineligible for Israeli citizenship and may be stateless (ibid.). Many Palestinians live in Lebanon and Syria and, to a lesser degree, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. These countries have not enacted policies to permit Palestinians to naturalize or granted nationality to children born of stateless Palestinians. As a result, thousands of persons of Palestinian origin in these countries may be stateless (ISI 2014, 127-129; Shiblak 2006, 8-9). Jordan has historically extended its citizenship to some Palestinians, but the right of Palestinians to hold Jordanian citizenship depends on the time and place of their residency in Jordan (IRB 2015). Most critically, in order to acquire Jordanian citizenship, Palestinians must have held Jordanian passports at the time of the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel annexed the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (Shiblak 2006, 9). Following Jordan’s disengagement with the West Bank in 1988, former West Bank residents that had entered Jordanian territory or third countries by July 1988 maintained their entitlement to Jordanian citizenship, while those remaining in the West Bank and Gaza, for the most part, lost their eligibility (IRB 2014). Those entering Jordan after July 1988 are also ineligible for Jordanian citizenship (ibid.). In recent years, several thousand Palestinians residing in Jordan have also been stripped of Jordanian nationality, rendering some of them stateless (Human Rights Watch 2010; IRB 2014). Many of these had expired or revoked Israeli-issued West Bank residence permits (ibid.). Finally, many Palestinians also reside outside of the Middle East. Some Palestinians in Europe hold only travel documents, most commonly from Lebanon, Egypt, or Israel, and lack proof of nationality (Shiblak 2006, 9). Many Palestinians are likely stateless not only in the Middle East, but across the world. Palestinians born in the Middle East—including Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza—are potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness. thus The Bidoon descended from persons who were not registered as citizens of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, in their periods of state formation following the First World War. Bidoon is short for “bidoon jinsiya”, or “without nationality.” Some Bidoon were not aware of procedures for registration, while others were deliberately excluded from registration (Van Waas 2010, 6-7). To date, these states have not embraced policies that limit the intergenerational transmission of statelessness or provide the Bidoon with a straightforward path to citizenship (ibid.). Kuwaiti Bidoon Kuwait possesses the largest population of Bidoon (Shiblak 2009, 38). Kuwait’s Bidoon have diverse origins. Some Bidoon are the descendants of persons not registered as Kuwaiti citizens following the passage of Kuwait’s first nationality law in 1959. Others were recruited from neighboring states, namely Saudi Arabia and Iraq, to fight for Kuwait’s military following the country’s independence in 1961 (Longva 1997, 51). Many of these persons renounced their original nationalities upon moving to Kuwait (ibid.). Some fled to Iraq in the aftermath of the first Gulf War (ibid.; Van Waas 2010, 16). Although Kuwait allows Bidoon to naturalize, its naturalization policies present significant 22