Mazen Masri on how Arab Israelis were treated during early years of statehood

The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, issued on 14 May 1948, offered “the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel … full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”  This ostensibly universal provision was no more, at this delicate moment, than necessary lip-service paid to the international community by the signatories of the Declaration: “the representatives of the Jewish Community of Eretz-Israel and of the Zionist Movement.”  Right from the beginning, Israel's leaders took measures and adopted policies that rendered the idea of citizenship empty and meaningless insofar as the indigenous Palestinians were concerned.  Even though the majority of the Palestinians were expelled in 1948 (only 160,000 remained in 1949, about 18 percent of the pre-1948 total), the leaders of the state saw the mere presence of the remaining Palestinians as a threat to the “Jewishness” of the state, a security threat, and a barrier to taking over the land.

As an expression of the “Jewishness” of the state and as a tool to secure a Jewish majority, Israel enacted in 1950 the Law of Return which gave Jews anywhere in the world an absolute right to immigrate and acquire automatic citizenship.  At the same time, Israel was adamant to reduce as much as possible the Palestinians' access to citizenship. It enacted the Nationality Law of 1952, which restricted eligibility to citizenship by imposing onerous requirements on Palestinians (i.e. meeting all the following conditions: to have been Palestinian before the establishment of the state; to have stayed in or entered Israel legally; to be resident in Israel up to 1 July 1952; and to be an inhabitant of the state on the date of entry into force of the law).  Many who “infiltrated” to their villages between 1948 and 1950, and had avoided forcible expulsion across the borders, had to be naturalized to stay in their homeland.

~ Mazen Masri, "Palestinian Citizenship in Israel: An Unwanted Minority Asserts Its Narrative and Identity," Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question