Mandatory Palestine passport

Mandatory Palestine passport
The front cover of a Mandatory Palestine passport.
Issued by	British Mandate for Palestine
Type of document	Passport
Purpose	Identification

The Mandatory Palestine passport refers to the travel document that was intended for residents of Mandatory Palestine between 1925 and 1948. The first brown-covered passport appeared around 1927, following the Nationality Law from 1925. From 1926 to 1935 alone approximately 70,000 of such travel documents were granted.

The status of Mandatory Palestine's citizenship was not legally defined until 1925. Before that time, the Government of Palestine issued British passports to those with British nationality, and two types of travel document to others:

Mandatory Palestine's citizenship and the various means of obtaining it was defined in an Order in Council of 24 July 1925. Turkish subjects habitually resident in Palestine (excluding Transjordan) on the first day of August 1925 automatically became citizens unless they opted to reject it. Many other classes of people were able to apply for citizenship, which would be granted at the discretion of the High Commissioner. An ordinance allowing the High Commissioner to issue passports to Mandatory Palestine's citizens was promulgated soon afterwards.

Although the nature of Mandatory Palestine's citizenship had been debated within the British government since 1920, the main reason it was delayed was that Turkish citizens were officially enemy aliens until the Treaty of Lausanne was ratified in 1923.

These passports became invalid with the termination of the British mandate on 15 May 1948. Even so, in the early 1950s, United Nations officials described the "worn dog-eared Palestine passport issued in Mandate days by a government that no longer legally exists" as "mementos of identity that were treasured by refugees".

Israeli, All-Palestine Government passports and Jordanian passports were offered to former British Mandate subjects according to the citizenship they acquired in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. A significant number of Arab Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip and those who found refuge in Syria and Lebanon, remained stateless.