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Comment by sparky_ | Hacker News Reader

What citizenship status do Palestianians have by default, if not Israeli? Given that Israel doesn't recognise Palestine as a state, doesn't that obligate them to confer Israeli citizenship to the residents, as they would otherwise be stateless?

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I believe that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are essentially stateless. It is similar to the South African Bantustans where you put an undesirable population so that they have a little bit of self-government so that you can justify excluding them from the electorate of the main nation, but not enough to actually be their own country, so you can essentially still manage that land.

Palestinians have a Palestinian Authority passport that is used for international travel. Per the Oslo accords in the 90s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_passport...

Though many hold Jordanian passports.

There is no obligation for any state to issue citizenship to anyone, unfortunately.

There are UN conventions[1][2] on statelessness that do require the bound parties to provide citizenship under very narrow conditions, essentially to avoid a stateless person. IANAL so I don't know if they apply in this type of example.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Sta... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Reduction_of...

Not only have most states not signed this, there is no meaningful penalty for ignoring it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Sta...

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