Why Do the Arabs in Judea and Samaria Lack Citizenship?

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the world powers carved up its territory and created a dozen states. In 1919,¹ 1920² and 1922, the world powers set aside one of those states, “Palestine,” for the sole purpose of reestablishing the Jewish national homeland. At the time, the geographical area of “Palestine” spread from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Iraqi border in the east.

The 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine provided for the original two-state solution, dividing geographical Palestine into one state to the east of the Jordan River – the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which would be the Arab country – and another state to the west of the Jordan River that was allocated, in its entirety, for the Jewish state.

In 1947,³ the UN tried to override the Mandate and again divide the area west of the Jordan River into two states. While the Jewish leadership accepted the proposal, the Arab leadership rejected it. Soon after, five Arab countries invaded the nascent Jewish state – now called Israel – and tried to destroy it. Jordan was one of the five Arab countries that attacked.

From mid-1948 to June 1967, Judea and Samaria were under Jordanian control. For the first time in history, the Jordanians renamed the area the “West Bank.” At the time, the Jordanians did not recognize the existence of the “Palestinian people” as a separate national identity, nor did they acknowledge the existence of a need to establish a separate Arab state in that area.

Accordingly, the Jordanians did not work to establish a “State of Palestine” in Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem, or in any other area. The opposite is true. Instead of working to establish a new state, the Jordanians annexed Judea, Samaria, and parts of Jerusalem. While most nations rejected the annexation, the Jordanians took it seriously and even gave Jordanian citizenship to all the residents of those areas.

The Jordanians maintained their baseless claim to Judea and Samaria until July 31, 1988, when King Hussein declared that “Jordan is not Palestine,” and that he had decided to grant Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem – areas over which he had no title – to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

By this time, King Hussein had apparently forgiven the PLO for trying, in 1970, to assassinate him. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat had also apparently forgiven Hussein for killing 25,000 Palestinians and expelling the PLO from Jordan, in response to the attempted assassinations.

While the Arab residents of Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem had held Jordanian citizenship for 38 years, from 1950 through 1988, on August 20, 1988, the Jordanian government issued a decree announcing that “every person residing in the West Bank prior to July 31, 1988, is a Palestinian and not a Jordanian.”

In this manner, the Jordanians unilaterally stripped most of the residents of Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem of their Jordanian citizenship, rendering them stateless. Some privileged residents of Judea and Samaria, such as senior PLO figures, were allowed to keep their Jordanian citizenship.

In 2018, the Jordanians decided to revoke the Jordanian citizenship of PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas and 30 other senior Palestinian leaders.⁴

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