BADIL

 What is “Jewish nationality” and what does it mean for Palestinian refugees, IDPs and Palestinians still remaining in their homes and lands?

“Jewish nationality” is a concept arising from Zionist ideology that has evolved in Israeli law pertaining to civil status, but which also lies at the base of official policy and practice. “Jewish nationality” status is a key to understanding the State of Israel’s ideology and machinery for acquiring the properties and other assets of the indigenous Palestinian people. Thus, religious affiliation, as “Jewish nationality” status is the criterion for determining who benefits from the economic and cultural assets of Palestine. Consequently, it also determines who loses in the material, social, cultural and political sense. It is a far more fundamental criterion for distributing rights and privileges than military service, mere Israeli citizenship, or even temporal connection with the country. The ideological criterion of “Jewish nationality,” therefore, is the lynch pin of the Zionist colonization project.

Already in 1863, the U.S. Civil War-era Lieber Code, which influenced the subsequent Hague Conventions, instructed that, in our modern age, “private citizens are no longer carried off to distant parts.”(¹) That claim now appears majestically naïve and tragically premature. At a time when the UN Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities was considering the human rights dimensions of “population transfer,”(²)