CITIZENSHIP AS DOMINATION: SETTLER COLONIALISM AND THE MAKING OF PALESTINIAN CITIZENSHIP IN ISRAEL
Arab Studies Journal, 2019
This article traces the making of the Israeli citizenship regime, focusing on the period between 1948 and 1952. During these formative years, the 1950 Law of Return, which governs Jewish entitlement to citizenship, and the 1952 Citizenship Law, which governs the status of ’48 Palestinians, were enacted. Situating the Israeli case within the broader history of citizenship-making in Anglophone settler colonial sites and drawing on analogies with Australia, the United States, and Canada, this article is interested in what this formative period, in which the constitutional cornerstones of Israel’s citizenship regime came into being, can tell us about Palestinian citizenship in Israel and about the institution of citizenship in settler-colonial contexts more broadly.
Lana Tatour is the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Palestine Studies