Q&A: How recognising Palestine affects stateless Palestinians

LONDON - Australia, Britain, Canada and France became the latest Western nations to recognise a Palestinian state last month, but the backing has cost Palestinians rights in other countries since they are no longer considered stateless, a legal expert said.

Patrícia Cabral, legal policy coordinator at the European Network on Statelessness, a civil society alliance, cited the examples of Bulgaria, Hungary and Norway, where Palestinians had seen their rights curtailed after statehood recognition.

Recognising a Palestinian state aims to pressure Israel to end its two-year assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 66,000 people, displaced 1.9 million and led to famine.

A U.N. Commission of Inquiry concluded in September that Israel had committed genocide in the narrow 25-mile (40 km) strip of land, an assessment rejected by Israel.     

U.S. President Donald Trump this week outlined a peace plan with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war, giving Palestinian militant group Hamas days to respond.

Cabral spoke to Context about the rights Palestinians should be afforded and the effect of recent political declarations.    

What protections should Palestinians have as stateless people?

Most Palestinians, who don't hold another nationality, should be considered stateless under international law. And that's because Palestine does not have a nationality law. 

It doesn't have sovereign control over its borders, it doesn't have the ability to issue identity and travel documents without depending on Israel for that as well. 

All of these are core elements of statehood.

Palestinians should be entitled to protection as refugees under the Refugee Convention, but then also as stateless persons under the 1954 Statelessness Convention.

Stateless Palestinians, as other stateless people, should be granted residency rights and access to economic and social rights, and also access to a facilitated route to naturalisation, for example, with reduced residency requirements, precisely because they are stateless and so they shouldn't be kept in limbo for a long time.

States also have safeguards to make sure children are not born stateless in their territory, which should also apply to Palestinian children who don't have another nationality.    

What are the legal implications for recognising Palestinian statehood?

Even if Palestine is recognised as a state by other countries, that is essentially a political statement. It's an act of political expression and it doesn't have legal implications.   

But in some countries, the fact that the state recognises Palestine has meant that there's a change in administrative practice or there's a change in government policy, and suddenly Palestinians are considered to have a nationality instead of being considered stateless.

We've seen, for example, in Bulgaria and Hungary, many Palestinians are denied protection because their governments recognise Palestine as a state. And so they're left without any routes of protection many times, or their applications for protection are automatically rejected.

Are you concerned that other countries, especially those that have recently recognised Palestinian statehood, will follow suit? 

Yes, we are concerned with that. We have seen that happening in Norway, for example.

Norway recognised Palestine as a state last year and because of that, there's been a change in government policy that says because of this recognition, Palestinians should not be considered stateless.

So they would have to comply with an eight-year residency requirement to access Norwegian nationality instead of the usual three years that they were accessing before. And there's been a lot of backlash against this. 

Because we have seen this happening in Norway, we're concerned that this may happen in other countries.     

Can this be prevented this from happening? 

There's a lot of work that can be done in terms of raising awareness, training authorities, decision-makers and the judiciary to address this.

That's why we have put out a legal briefing (on protecting the rights of stateless Palestinians) so that legal practitioners are aware of this and are equipped with arguments that they can use in their own cases. 

Definitely the courts have a role here as well.     

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

(Reporting by Lin Taylor; Editing by Jon Hemming.)