History is integral to understanding how the Israel-Palestine conflict emerged. This is because almost all aspects of that conflict—from the question of self-determination to territorial boundaries—were forged in the past. Any serious study on Palestine therefore entails revisiting the colonial era when Palestine was carved out of the Ottoman Empire and placed under a League of Nations Mandate. Dr Qafisheh's book acknowledges the importance of history by examining Palestinian nationality during the Mandate era when many of the legal (and still unresolved) controversies concerning the Palestine question first arose.

This monograph is based on Dr Qafisheh's doctorate for which he was awarded a distinction by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. It is comprised of twelve chapters, beginning with an introduction and literature review, and then examines the Nationality Law of Palestine during the Ottoman Empire, followed by a chapter entitled ‘Palestinian nationality in transition’. The latter chapter covers the era when Palestine was placed under British military occupation in December 1917, through to the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, to the time when a Citizenship Order was first enacted in 1925. The former chapter examines the Ottoman Nationality Law of 1869 in some detail noting that it was inspired by the French legal model and ‘transformed the idea of citizenship into a secular concept by abandoning religion as the basis for nationality’ (page 27).

In his chapter on the Palestine Citizenship Order 1925, Dr Qafisheh makes the important observation that this law remains significant because, as he argues:

The next six chapters examine various aspects Palestinian nationality during the British Mandate, such as naturalization, expatriation, the recognition of Palestinian nationality by third states, the admission of foreigners into Palestine, and the applicability of international nationality instruments to Palestine. The penultimate chapter examines the nationality provisions provided for in the 1947 UN Partition Plan. Dr Qafisheh concludes his study by summing up the main findings of his thesis, and examines Palestinian nationality in the context of the right of return of the refugees displaced from their homes during the 1947–9 Arab-Israeli conflict, and the different legal statuses Palestinians have depending on whether they are residents of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip or East Jerusalem.

This study is well researched and referenced and brings to light forgotten cases, laws, and League of Nations documents. It is likely to become a very useful resource to which any serious scholar should turn to before writing on Palestinian nationality in the future. Whilst one may question Dr Qafisheh's claim that the Palestine Citizenship Order 1925 remains applicable in the occupied territories today, assuming, for instance, that it has not fallen into desuetude, history remains of the utmost importance to the Palestinians particularly when it comes to drafting any new nationality legislation. This monograph will be extremely useful to the Palestinian legal draftsman asked to write a new Palestinian nationality law should a viable Palestinian state emerge one day.

There are also some hidden ‘gems’ tucked away in this book, such as the material Dr Qafisheh discovered in the League of Nations archives in Geneva on those Palestinians who were resident abroad in 1925, (some 600,000 Syrians, including Lebanese and Palestinians, settled in the Americas in the years 1860–1914), when Britain enacted the Citizenship Order, which retrospectively denationalized them. Letters of complaint were sent to the League of Nations from Palestinians in Mexico complaining that they were not aware of the Palestine Citizenship Order 1925 because the Palestine Government would not authorize advertisements in foreign countries to bring instructions to their notice.Footnote ¹⁴ Dr. Qafisheh cites a passage from the Palestine Royal Commission Report of 1937 which noted that out of 9,000 applications for citizenship submitted in the years 1925 to 1936 from persons born in Palestine, who had a real and effective link there, ‘not more than 100 were accepted’.Footnote ¹⁵ British consulates outside of Palestine also rejected applications for citizenship on the grounds that the applicants did not reside in Palestine for the six month residency period required. In contrast, as Qafisheh notes, ‘special facilities were granted to foreign Jewish students abroad to obtain Palestinian nationality without requesting such students to be present in Palestine’.Footnote ¹⁶

One hopes that in any second edition of this study, Dr Qafisheh will consider taking into account the wider historical and political trends that occurred in Europe and the Middle East in the inter-war years and perhaps bring it up to date. This might provide an explanation as to why the Palestine Mandate was, in many respects, most unusual especially when compared to other A-class Mandates in the Levant. One would also have thought that a more detailed analysis of what happened to Palestinian nationality after Israel was created in 1948 would have been appropriate even if this went beyond the temporal scope of Qafisheh's initial PhD. This would have enabled him to explain and elaborate on his claim that the Palestine Citizenship Order 1925 remains in force in the occupied territories today. If it is the case that this law remains in force then it could have important ramifications in the domestic courts of third states that occasionally have to deal with questions arising from the refugee status of Palestinians seeking asylum abroad.Footnote ¹⁷ For instance, If Qafisheh is correct in saying that the Palestine Citizenship Order is still in force in the occupied territories today, can the Palestinians be regarded as stateless? One would have thought that the lack of a Palestinian state would preclude such a finding. However, as Qafisheh notes ‘modern history has witnessed many instances in which non-independent states conferred their nationality on their inhabitants’ (page 211). In order to elaborate on this important observation, Dr Qafisheh really should have engaged in a more in-depth analysis of the law of state succession, inter-temporal law, the rasion d'être of the Mandate system, Israeli law and international humanitarian law. This criticism is not, however, meant to detract from the overall merits of this study, which as a piece of legal scholarship is of the first order.