The Nakba and the Emergence of the Palestinian Diaspora in Kuwait

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The Nakba and the Emergence of the Palestinian Diaspora in Kuwait

11 October, 2018

Authors

Shafiq al-Ghabra

Keywords

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Shafiq al-Ghabra

Political science professor at the University of Kuwait. Earned his doctorate from Texas University, Austen, in 1987. Served as director of the Kuwaiti Media Office in Washington from 1998-2002, and director of the Center for Strategic and Futuristic Studies at Kuwait University from 2003-2006. One of the founders of the American University of Kuwait. Has written a number of published studies, most recently Kuwait: A Study of the Instruments of State, Authority and Society, and Insecure Life: The Generation of Dreams and Disappointments.

In his book The Nakba and the Emergence of the Palestinian Diaspora in Kuwait (342 p.p.), published by the ACRPS as part of its 'Palestinian Memory' series, Shafiq al-Ghabra seeks to understand an important and undocumented part of the Palestinian diaspora – the third largest Palestinian diaspora community until 1990 – through a far-reaching investigation of the survival and accommodation strategies used by a people driven by force to settle far from its homeland.

The eleven chapters begin with a theoretical approach to the uprooting of the Palestinians and the ensuing diaspora. The author goes on to analyze the 1948 Nakba,

the exiled elite, family cohesion and women and national identity, the plight of the farming class and the diaspora, the family as a transient entity, the social dynamics and survival of family networks, economic and social coping strategies and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and missed opportunities. He concludes with a chapter on the reproduction of the Palestinian diaspora and the future, discussing the relationship between Palestinians and Kuwaitis after the liberation of Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation, trying to build a new relationship between the two peoples, after being damaged by the crisis.