UK House of Lords to re-examine Palestinian refugees' alleged statelessness
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Petition to the UK House of Lords to re-examine the situation of the Palestinian refugees in the light of the laws on domicile and citizenship currently accepted by civilized nations.
We the undersigned would like to raise the following issue with the House of the Lords of the United Kingdom concerning the rights and responsibilities of the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Naqba (Catastrophe) and the 1967 War:
Legal Human Rights instruments worldwide such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights include the provision that no one may be denied a nationality. This has the effect of repudiating the right of states to strip its citizens of citizenship for purely political, ethnic and/or religious reasons.
The United Kingdom also has had a practice of ignoring the purported rights of other nations to ethnically cleanse their populations, the best example of this being after the Declaration of War against the Third Reich in 1939, when German Jews resident in the United Kingdom and no longer entitled to German citizenship under the laws of the Third Reich then in force, were duly interned with Germans of little or no political activity or interest and Germans known to be active National Socialist sympathisers.
In this context we have the Federal Republic of Germany paying reparations for the crimes of the Third Reich against German citizens of Jewish ethnicity, in spite of the Third Reich's unilateral repudiation of their German citizenship, to those self-same citizens who survived those crimes.
A particular example of this self-same state repudiation of citizenship and later full acknowledgement of citizenship, is the case of South Africa. We expect the House of Lords is fully seized of the relevance of the establishment of the South African "bantustans" during the Apartheid regime, and the concomitant state repudiation of Black South Africans' citizenships, to the Naqba of 1948 and the refusal of the Israel government to permit the return of the refugees.
Again, the Privy Council, which participates through its several members, in the House of Lords and in its members' own several responsibilities, has passed rulings which relate to this matter, the most notorious being the one in 1983 relating the the issue of Samoan overstayers in New Zealand, where, due to a law passed by the New Zealand government in the 1940s granting Western Samoans New Zealand citizenship, the New Zealand government could not then deny Samoans resident in New Zealand the rights and duties of New Zealand citizenship, although Samoa had gained independence in the meantime.
Again, a fact little known is that though most Iraqi Jews left Iraq in 1949 after the first Israel-Arab League conflict, they were still eligible to vote in the Iraqi elections in 2004 on proof of Iraqi citizenship, either their own or a grandfather's.
Israel has to a large degree succeeded to the rights and responsibilities of government over the territory formerly known as Mandatory Palestine, and has based its form of government on the Westminster form of parliamentary representation and the Common Law. It has refused to succeed to an equal degree to its rights and responsibilities to the people domiciled there, and has ethnically cleansed them, thus repudiating those rights and responsibilities.
To make it worse, it has made allegations that the return of the refugees would destroy Israel; thus making an implicit comparison between a humanitarian objective - the repatriation of refugees after a state of war has finished - and an act of genocide. This is morally reprehensible and quite frankly, is reminiscent of some of the worst European anti-Semitic propaganda of the preceding two centuries, and thus preserves a horrific precedent. This should therefore not be a consideration in your deliberations.
In the light of all the above-mentioned precedent, it would appear that the Palestinian refugees are not in fact stateless as has been argued at various times by various individuals, and the Arab League states are right in arguing that it is primarily an Israeli problem, as they would be Israeli citizens in any scenario under the European law mentioned above. It would thus be appropriate for the UN therefore to seek monetary compensation from Israel for its sixty-year maintenance of Israel's citizens ethnically cleansed by the Zionist parties that seized the majority of Mandatory Palestine in 1948.
We the undersigned request a careful, respectful and non-politically biased or motivated examination and consideration of this issue from the House of Lords in the light of the precedents cited and the fact that Israel insists on using the laws of Mandatory Palestine as passed by the parliament of the United Kingdom during the period of Mandatory Palestine, and of Europe when and where it suits those currently in power, but will not accept the responsibilities that this entails.
We the undersigned would like to raise the following issue with the House of the Lords of the United Kingdom concerning the rights and responsibilities of the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Naqba (Catastrophe) and the 1967 War:
Legal Human Rights instruments worldwide such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights include the provision that no one may be denied a nationality. This has the effect of repudiating the right of states to strip its citizens of citizenship for purely political, ethnic and/or religious reasons.
The United Kingdom also has had a practice of ignoring the purported rights of other nations to ethnically cleanse their populations, the best example of this being after the Declaration of War against the Third Reich in 1939, when German Jews resident in the United Kingdom and no longer entitled to German citizenship under the laws of the Third Reich then in force, were duly interned with Germans of little or no political activity or interest and Germans known to be active National Socialist sympathisers.
In this context we have the Federal Republic of Germany paying reparations for the crimes of the Third Reich against German citizens of Jewish ethnicity, in spite of the Third Reich's unilateral repudiation of their German citizenship, to those self-same citizens who survived those crimes.
A particular example of this self-same state repudiation of citizenship and later full acknowledgement of citizenship, is the case of South Africa. We expect the House of Lords is fully seized of the relevance of the establishment of the South African "bantustans" during the Apartheid regime, and the concomitant state repudiation of Black South Africans' citizenships, to the Naqba of 1948 and the refusal of the Israel government to permit the return of the refugees.
Again, the Privy Council, which participates through its several members, in the House of Lords and in its members' own several responsibilities, has passed rulings which relate to this matter, the most notorious being the one in 1983 relating the the issue of Samoan overstayers in New Zealand, where, due to a law passed by the New Zealand government in the 1940s granting Western Samoans New Zealand citizenship, the New Zealand government could not then deny Samoans resident in New Zealand the rights and duties of New Zealand citizenship, although Samoa had gained independence in the meantime.
Again, a fact little known is that though most Iraqi Jews left Iraq in 1949 after the first Israel-Arab League conflict, they were still eligible to vote in the Iraqi elections in 2004 on proof of Iraqi citizenship, either their own or a grandfather's.
Israel has to a large degree succeeded to the rights and responsibilities of government over the territory formerly known as Mandatory Palestine, and has based its form of government on the Westminster form of parliamentary representation and the Common Law. It has refused to succeed to an equal degree to its rights and responsibilities to the people domiciled there, and has ethnically cleansed them, thus repudiating those rights and responsibilities.
To make it worse, it has made allegations that the return of the refugees would destroy Israel; thus making an implicit comparison between a humanitarian objective - the repatriation of refugees after a state of war has finished - and an act of genocide. This is morally reprehensible and quite frankly, is reminiscent of some of the worst European anti-Semitic propaganda of the preceding two centuries, and thus preserves a horrific precedent. This should therefore not be a consideration in your deliberations.
In the light of all the above-mentioned precedent, it would appear that the Palestinian refugees are not in fact stateless as has been argued at various times by various individuals, and the Arab League states are right in arguing that it is primarily an Israeli problem, as they would be Israeli citizens in any scenario under the European law mentioned above. It would thus be appropriate for the UN therefore to seek monetary compensation from Israel for its sixty-year maintenance of Israel's citizens ethnically cleansed by the Zionist parties that seized the majority of Mandatory Palestine in 1948.
We the undersigned request a careful, respectful and non-politically biased or motivated examination and consideration of this issue from the House of Lords in the light of the precedents cited and the fact that Israel insists on using the laws of Mandatory Palestine as passed by the parliament of the United Kingdom during the period of Mandatory Palestine, and of Europe when and where it suits those currently in power, but will not accept the responsibilities that this entails.
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