A Lecture as in Psychological, Social and Existential Dimensions of Refugee Life entitle: "Palestinians and statelessness"

Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies (IALIIS) hosted Dr. Abbas Sheblak on Wednesday 15 June, 2011 in the “Psychological, Social and Existential Dimensions of Refugee Life” course.

Dr. Shiblak, discussed the issue of statelessness of Palestinians. As a matter of fact, as he said, the Palestinians considered the largest stateless people in the world. Mentioning the impact of statelessness on their life, since nationality is the key to life inside or outside one’s country, which allows “citizens” to enjoy the  services countries deliver.     

While Arab countries impose restrictions and complicated regulations in terms of nationality. He explained three ways of getting nationality, through the father, being born in the territory, or through nationalizing. While there are two kinds of statelessness, de jure and de facto.       

Finally, Dr. Shiblak presented the phases of development of the Palestinian nationality due to the successive governing regimes, starting from the Ottoman era 1860, ending up with the Palestinian Authority. He pointed out that some countries use the issue of nationality as a political tool by granting it for some refugees under the condition of depositing huge amount of money in the banks of the hosting country for long periods of time without withdrawing it.