Trudy Rubin
- 1974
Fellowship Title:
- The Impact of the '73 Middle East War on Egyptian and Israeli Society
Fellowship Year:
- 1974
What do the Palestinians Want?(III)
The Palestinians in Kuwait
In July 1948, a young unemployed Palestinian heard that teachers were being recruited in Jordan for Kuwait. Hani Kaddumi had left Jaffa during the fighting and was desperate for work. He rushed to Amman only to find that the recruiter had left the previous day. Unwilling to give up, the former employee in the British mandate passport office in Jaffa sent a cable: “To the ruler of Kuwait: I am offering my services to work in the area of passports and immigration. I can also teach English, Arabic or mathematics.” One month later a friend rushed breathlessly into his home with the reply: “You are offered the position of Director of Passports and Immigration in Kuwait.” Thus Hani Kaddumi arrived in the dusty backwater of Kuwait in August 1948, among the first of several waves of Palestinians who would help shape its development from a desert oasis into an ultramodern boom state. Today he is a millionaire. And there are 200,000 Palestinians in Kuwait, a fifth of the country’s population. Their situation provides an unusual
What do the Palestinians Want?(II)
Conversations In The Camps
The Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon present a special obstacle to a peace settlement in Geneva; Most of the 95,000 refugees in 15 camps in Lebanon come originally from the northern Galilee or from the areas around Jaffa or Acre on the Mediterranean coast. They do not consider the West Bank of Jordan their home — many had never even visited it before they fled in 1948 — and thus feel they have little to gain from a West Bank-Gaza Palestinian state. I visited three Lebanese camps (I plan to revisit and write more extensively about them in the future). In Shatila camp on the outskirts of Beirut, I was accompanied by a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the families with whom I spoke were supporters of that group. In Ein el-Helweh and Mieh-Mieh camps outside Sidon in the south, I visited on my own in the company of camp residents. Over and over I was given the same message: to these people, going to the West Bank meant
What do the Palestinians Want? (I)
Conversations in the Diaspora: The Middle Class in Beirut
“I’m from Gaza. What’s the West Bank to me?” — Beirut lawyer “There is something worse than having a West Bank state and that is having nothing.” — PLO official Preface Confronted for the first time in twenty-five years with the real possibility of a state of their own, the Palestinians are embroiled in internal debate over what they want — and what they are willing to accept. The various resistance groups have put forth contradictory positions. But it is difficult to know what the Palestinian people want since this “people” is scattered, with few real links, over continents: the West Banker living under occupation; the middle class Beiruti, earning a good income and fairly well assimilated into Lebanese society; the émigré working or studying in Europe or the United States; the oil technician in the Gulf; the refugee in a camp, etc. etc. Some PLO officials have even suggested a referendum should be held for all Palestinians, an unlikely possibility. This newsletter, which looks at successful Palestinians in Beirut, is the first of several