Palestine Certificate Of Naturalization 1942

Without this document, you could not get a British Palestine passport or ID card, so it’s related to passport history. To find such a document is unusual, I would say. How many Palestinians will still have today such an old Certificate of Naturalization? I do not guess many. The document is issued in three languages (English, Hebrew and Arabic).

Kurt and Ruth Fröhlich

The documents were issued to Kurt Fröhlich, born in Poland, but he was a German national. They state he owns a laundry shop. Kurt was married to Ruth Fröhlich, née Lowitsch. Her picture is also on the naturalization document. Does this mean the wife automatically became a Palestinian citizen too?

Palestinian Citizenship Order

The King of England passed the Palestine Citizenship Order-in-Council one year after the Lausanne Treaty, and its provisions officially came into force on 1 August 1925.

This citizenship order was unique among Great Britain’s mandates and territories. In Iraq and Transjordan, local Arab authorities enacted nationality legislation and had official representation with the British mandatory.. See Palestinian Citizenship Order…

In Britain’s African mandates, inhabitants remained British-protected persons.  Just like the other imperial orders, the Citizenship Order was enacted by the British Government, not by the Government of Palestine.

It is noteworthy that, up until mid-1924, the draft order-in-council regulating Palestinian citizenship was titled the Palestinian Nationality Order-in-Council. Only in May did colonial officials recommend this be changed to the Palestinian Citizenship Order-in-Council to avoid complications.

Significant Change

By July, the draft order had ‘nationality’ crossed out and replaced with ‘citizenship’. Shortly before issuing the order, the Colonial Office replaced ‘subject’ with ‘citizen’ and provided clarity on ‘national’ in the Treaty of Lausanne. Subsequently, in an article, Norman Bentwich, former Attorney General of Palestine, connected this alteration to Orientalism.

Bentwich noted a transition from ‘national’ to ‘citizen’ in the order, attributing it to distinctions in Oriental terminology. In the East, individuals actively expressed allegiance through citizenship, while factors such as race and religion were associated with nationality. Arabs and Jews, both Palestinian citizens, asserted distinct Arab or Jewish nationalities.

The Palestine citizenship order did not grant Palestinian citizens the rights they agitated for as citizens: control over their own government or rights to their borders, treaties, educational affairs, public works, election laws, taxation and tithe rates or trade laws.

Several Amendments

The British made multiple amendments to the mandate order, mainly addressing issues faced by Jewish immigrants, seldom benefiting Arabs. In the 1930s, they actively amended legislation, allowing native Palestinians to undergo naturalization upon returning and establishing permanent residence in Palestine.

Palestinian citizenship under British rule lacked the attributes of British citizenship, leading to a stark contrast in discourses. The British Empire held the decisive authority over Palestinian legal identity. The 1947 exit of the British from Palestine resulted in the creation of Israel in 1948 and the nullification of internationally recognized Palestinian citizenship.

This article is an edited extract of ‘The creation of Palestinian citizenship under an international mandate: legislation, discourses and practices, 1918–1925’ which appeared in the Citizenship Studies 2012 special issue ‘Citizenship after Orientalism: an unfinished project’. The referenced and complete essay can be found here. Funding for this research comes from the European Research Council under the EU’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement no 249379.

 

 

Tom Topol | Passport History Expert & Author.
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