Dispossessed of nationality and land: Explaining the underpinnings of Israel's regime of apartheid against the Palestinians

There is no such thing, legally-speaking, as Israeli nationality. Despite numerous campaigns and court challenges, Israel’s government and courts have upheld the country’s discriminatory nationality laws, which recognize Jewish nationality and the full citizenship rights attached to it, but deny citizenship rights to other nationalities, whether they be Druze, Samaritans, Arabs or others.

Dispossession of nationality to Palestinians has coincided with Israel’s dispossession of Palestinian land. This began when Israel unilaterally declared statehood in 1948, triggering a war that forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Immediately following the war, Israel passed laws that denationalized Palestinians and refused them the possibility of returning to their land and livelihoods. To this day, there are an estimated 8.7 million
forcibly displaced Palestinians worldwide, including 760,000 internally-displaced Palestinians who became Israeli citizens, but have been prohibited from reclaiming their land.

Struggles around nationality and land form part of a persistent social, political and legal resistance against Israel’s regime of apartheid, including in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah that recently made international headlines.