Tag citizenship & nationality
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian: For the past several weeks we had been working with teachers and parents to collect hand-written letters from the girls. We asked them to reflect on their experiences as girls growing up in Jerusalem. What was it like to be a Palestinian girl in Jerusalem? What did justice mean to them?
Amahl Bishara: In many hours logged on the road, I’ve learned that driving is a site of embodied, everyday politics — a kind that is too often overlooked in favor of official or formal political statements and stances. The different experiences of ’48 Palestinians and ’67 Palestinians shows how the Nakba is at the root of Palestinian fragmentation, and the road network is a prime instrument of their separation from each other.
Lauren Banko: The systematic exclusion of Arab migration from Israel/Palestine did not begin with the 1948 Nakba. Instead, it is rooted in specific understandings of race and nationality enshrined in the international legal agreements that laid the framework for the colonial state of the British Mandate of Palestine, the state inherited by the Zionist movement.
In 2011, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) circulated a draft Palestinian Nationality Law as part of its efforts to achieve international recognition of Palestine’s status as a state. The Nakba Files spoke to Dr. Mutaz Qafisheh, the dean of Hebron University’s College of Law & Political Science and a principal drafter of the bill. Qafisheh is the author of a study on the international law foundations of Palestinian citizenship.