Institutionalising Citizenship: Creating Distinctions between Arab and Jewish Palestinian Citizens, 1926–1934

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the ways in which Palestinian citizenship became bureaucratised after the 1925 Citizenship Order-in-Council through the early 1930s. This process of bureaucratization allowed local and imperial officials to use nationality and citizenship as tools to classify, categorize, and discipline the citizenry, immigrants, and non-habitual residents. These tools served different purposes for the British officials in London, for those in Jerusalem, and for the leadership of the Zionist Organisation in relation to its activities in Palestine. The division of control between Whitehall and the Palestine Administration meant that, overall, the creation of legislation was de-centralized in nature. The division of control was not always balanced, however: within Whitehall the Foreign and Colonial Offices disagreed over the application of policy and so too did local administrators in Palestine.