Citizenship and the State: A Comparative Study of Citizenship Legislation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon

Reviewed by Uri Davis embarks upon an interesting and daunting project: tracing the origins and cur- rent status of citizenship in four Middle Eastern states and in the Palestinian proto-state. The result is a well-researched and well-written book; a major contribution to better understanding not only of the Palestinian predicament, but also of statehood and nationalism in the Middle East at large. The author's preoccupation with the issue of citizenship, while evidently of pertinence to him analytically, caunot be divorced from his life-long political and intellectual entanglement with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and from his involvement in the Palestine