Nearly 10,000 Palestinians have had their residency status revoked by the Israeli government in East Jerusalem since 2000 according to B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Since the start of the Israeli-Palestinian escalation on the 7th of October, Israelis and Israeli state officials have been calling for the revocation of citizenship for Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI) who are voicing opposition to the violence in Gaza or advocating for an end to the bloodshed, which could potentially result in a significant increase in statelessness among the Palestinian population.
A history of displacement and statelessness
The forced displacement of Palestinians during the Nakba in 1948 left them without a recognised state, resulting in the largest and longest-standing refugee population in the world. According to the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, approximately 9.1 million Palestinian refugees exist globally, the majority of whom are considered stateless under international law. This issue severely restricts their movements and access to basic human rights. As a result, Palestinians consistently face discriminatory legal frameworks and obstacles to obtaining fair treatment as refugees and/or stateless persons.Â
Dr. Yael Berda, an assistant professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has published an article explaining that most of the Palestinians under Israeli de facto control lack full or equal citizenship to Israelis. They are divided based on a hierarchy of status into three categories: i) Palestinians with Israeli passports, descendants of Nakba survivors who constitute a fifth of the Israeli population, ii) residents with identity cards only in East Jerusalem and occupied Golan Heights, and iii) Palestinians without any citizenship status in Israel. All these groups are subjects of direct or indirect military rule. Amnesty International has described the situation Palestinians live in as a “cruel system of domination and crime against humanity”, concluding that this system amounts to apartheid. Â
Free speech suppression and political persecution
Since 7 October 2023, when Israel launched a full-scale intervention on Gaza following an unprecedented attack on Israelis by Hamas, Palestinian citizens of Israel have faced severe political persecution. Israeli officials and Israelis on social media have called for the citizenship of Palestinian citizens of Israel to be revoked if they speak out against the Israeli Government’s actions, leading to significant concerns about Palestinians facing a crackdown on their freedom of speech .Â
On 15 February 2023, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) approved a bill to revoke the citizenship of individuals convicted of terrorism or of an offence that constitutes a breach of trust to the State of Israel if they received compensation from the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank for those actions. Critics argue that this legislation could increase statelessness among Palestinians, further marginalising an already vulnerable population. The legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel, Adalah, contends that criminal law is the legitimate way to address such alleged crimes – not citizenship revocation. They view this bill as part of a series of laws targeting Arab citizens, seeking to make their citizenship conditional or based on their opinions. Â
This new amendment follows a prior amendment to the Citizenship Law in 2008, which provides that citizenship may be revoked for “breach of trust or disloyalty to the State.” The Israeli Supreme Court examined the amendment in a ruling in July 2022, and affirmed that it meets Israeli constitutional standards even if the result is that an individual is left stateless. The revocation of citizenship is one of the most extreme punitive measures and may result in cruel and disproportionate punishment against Palestinian citizens of Israel.Â
Previous examples of citizenship revocation
In 2017, 2,600 Palestinian Bedouins in the Negev desert had their Israeli citizenship stripped due to what the Israeli Government described as “bureaucratic errors”. Officials admit the true number may be much higher. In December 2022, Salah Hammouri, a lawyer and researcher for the human rights group Addameer, who was a resident of Jerusalem, had his permanent residency revoked. The Israeli Government held Hammouri without charge or trial for three months and then deported him to Paris as he also held French citizenship. The allegations were based on what the Israeli Government described as “involvement with a terrorist organisation”.  Amnesty International described the incident as “a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a war crime”. Â
However, human rights organisations have questioned these acts by the Israeli Government. For example, concerns have been raised about organisations like UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) being included in a preliminary bill in the Knesset to be designated as a terrorist organisation. The relevant laws also provide no set list of crimes that fall under the definition of “terrorism”, but instead provide very broad criteria that are widely open to interpretation and can be applied retroactively.Â
Governments have historically used citizenship revocation as a tool against marginalised and minoritised groups. In fact, two thirds of the world’s stateless populations belong to minority groups, with the detrimental impacts of statelessness being felt across generations. The legislative actions in Israel highlight the urgent need to address the implications of citizenship revocation amid the ongoing Gaza conflict. These measures threaten to worsen the already critical issue of statelessness among Palestinians both within and outside the occupied territories.Â
