Palestinians In Kuwait

The Family And The Politics Of Survival

Shafeeq N Ghabra

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000310931
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The research, field work and writing for this study have taken over two years. The book was originally written as a Ph.D. dissertation under the supervision of Professor James Bill of the University of Texas (at Austin). I am grateful to him for his careful and considerate attention to the manuscript at its several stages. I wish to thank Professor Henry Dietz, Robert Femea, Lawrence Graham, and Robert Hardgrave, who provided important suggestions for the writing of this study. Four more individuals deserve particular mention for their contribution to the writing of the book. Dr. Barbara Harlow who took time to read the entire manuscript and Dr. Michael Fischer who read part. I thank both of them for the valuable suggestions provided to me. I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Ghassan Salame of the American University of Beirut whose support encouraged me to turn my Ph.D. dissertation into a book. Finally, I would like to thank Barbara Ellington, senior acquisition editor of W estview Press, for her support

1
Statelessness in Context

The Palestinian diaspora subculture that emerged in the wake of the displacement experience can be categorized as stateless and family-oriented. Family patterns since 1948 have become more flexible as have Middle Eastern families in general. A non-family social network has also developed and become basic to Palestinian diaspora survival. How do these characteristics interrelate?

Palestinians: A Stateless Society

“Statelessness” in the twentieth century usually describes the political condition resulting from forced mass migration. It springs primarily from laws that allow for the revocation of the citizenship of a naturalized person.¹ Statelessness becomes quite serious when such revocation is targeted against an ethnic or religious minority.² In many cases, though, the naturalized citizen and the native-born citizen undergo similar experiences, so statelessness may be defined as any loss of citizenship and the rights associated therewith.

Emphasis simply on the loss of citizenship ignores the problems of many people who lose citizenship as a by-product of forced mass expulsion due to the disintegration of their states during a time of crisis or war. Statelessness may result in perpetually seeking refuge, or a continuing state of dispossession with regard to the original homeland and all rights associated therewith.

A state may organize to expel a group of indigenous citizens for many reasons. In some cases, intolerance toward nonconformist groups is enough to justify expulsion. In other cases, war between two states makes each persecute and expel those among its own population whose ethnic identity is similar to that of the “enemy” state. Systems sometimes need a scapegoat to blame policy failure on, and one-sided ideologies often force many into statelessness.

Statelessness is one of the most serious international problems of the twentieth century. Stories of the interwar period and World War II are filled with stateless people seeking refuge. In 1939 Germany introduced laws to revoke the citizenship of its naturalized Jewish population, and even of Jewish citizens by birth.³ The Jews of Romania and Poland faced a similar fate. The Armenians are another group who were driven from their lands during this century, as were the Palestinians in 1948 and 1967. The number of stateless people is vast, particularly if we include examples drawn from Latin America, Asia, and Africa.⁴

The problems of the stateless are multiple. Because of being rightless, they are vulnerable and insecure wherever they go. The stateless discover that, as long as they are fragmented and weak, they exist as political scapegoats and international victims. At one level or another, problems of residence, travel, employment, property ownership, enfranchisement, opportunity, and education become part of the package of insecurity. Even when naturalized, they continue to feel insecure because naturalization can be revoked simply by changing the law. In her book, Hannah Arendt described the many problems faced by the stateless. Chief among them is the loss of their homes, which means “the loss of the entire social texture into which they were born and in which they established for themselves a distinct place in the world.”⁵ The stateless suddenly find no place on earth they can “go to without the severest of all restrictions.”⁶ Even their acceptance by the indigenous populations of the countries they migrate to is problematic and poses problems for sociological, economic, and cultural reasons.⁷ In other words, “once the stateless had left their homeland they remained homeless, once they had left their state they became stateless; once they had been deprived of their human rights they were rightless, the scum of the earth.”⁸

It is quite important not to confuse the environment of the stateless with their inner dynamics. Though the stateless have difficulty in finding security, shelter, and respect, many stateless communities have rejected mere assimilation and a substitute homeland. To them such attempts, particularly when instigated by international agencies or by other states, are an attempt to get them to surrender their historical rights to their homeland--often seen as providing the enemy the moral victory it seeks. In the Palestinian case, for instance, many clashes took place between the refugees and the local Arab authorities in Jordan and Egypt during the 1950s and 1960s, when these governments attempted to create permanent settlements. The Palestinians have sought to keep their attachment and loyalty to the original homeland. As time passes, the yearning to return becomes even more powerful.

The historical experience of the Jews indicates that only after Babylonian captivity did they develop a special sentiment toward Palestine.⁹ Their music, prayers, and hymns developed noticeably during captivity.¹⁰ The experience of the Armenians and the Palestinians is analagous. It seems that in exile the stateless create institutions and practices that help them survive the hardships of dispersion. Statelessness becomes a state of mind, a continuous process of survival.

Traditional Palestine: A Family-Oriented Society

The Palestinians who were exiled in 1948 were a highly family-oriented society that gave precedence to informal and personal ties. As an important socioeconomic unit, the family settled, through its elders, inter-as well as intrafamily disputes. It also provided occupational security for family members, organized working the land, distributed its fruits, and entered into common entrepreneurial ventures. Marriage and divorce, death and burial, were all family issues, part of the sacred domain of uncles, grandparents, and paternal blood relatives.¹¹

For example, in the village of Dayr Yasin during the 1930s and 1940s, each of the five major families of the village of six hundred individuals-the Sammurs, Shahadahs, Radwans, Zaydans, and Hamidahs-owned a stone quarry. Economic production in Dayr Yasin rested primarily on stone portering, which was arranged according to family.¹² In the nearby village of Qalonya, however, the family occupation was largely in the government bureaucracy. Two families from Qalonya during the 1930s and 1940s, for example, became predominantly employees in the government-owned telegraph and postal service in Palestine.¹³ One family member attracted another until the institution became full of family members.

Housing patterns provide another example of the family as a basic socioeconomic unit. The process of settlement in pre-1948 Palestine would start with a family founder who chose to live in a certain location. With every marriage, a new room would be built; as the family got larger, new houses were built. After a century or so, the quarter would become known by the family name. This pattern was established in the villages of Palestine and in many of its cities. After World War I, many Palestinian cities experienced rapid urbanization, which changed the housing patterns of several Palestinian urban centers, but family settlements remained a dominant feature of Palestinian urban and village life until 1948.

Even in education, family played an important role. For example, many family houses in Hebron, Tulkarim, or Jerusalem became known as centers of learning. This is a function of a culture that was able, through the family, to protect and pass down family occupations from father to son. Houses that produced religious figures usually did so over generations. Although this continuity has survived somewhat, the rigid lines of the past in terms of family and specialization have definitely ceased to exist.

In pre-1948 Palestine, the more functional family unit was the extended (patriarchal) family, or, as Tannous calls it, the “joint family,” composed of “parents, their children, the paternal grandparents, the paternal uncles and their families, and unmarried paternal aunts,”¹⁴ in addition to the possible addition of a son-in-law, an orphaned nephew or niece from the husband’s side, or any other close paternal cousin. Next in significance was the larger family unit, composed of several extended households that shared the same patrilineal line and bearing the same family name.¹⁵ In many cases, this entire unit, which might range from a few dozen people to several hundred, was linked to a larger, more distinct unit called the hamula. The hamula, which is a descent group, cuts across a set of villages and towns. Its members believe they have a common biological ancestor. Thus, family and all its functions in pre-1948 Palestine were composed of a set of circles, each of which interchangeably performed several functions.

Although the Palestinians have experienced traumatic socioeconomic changes since the 1850s, when, for the first time a system of village/city dependence was created,¹⁶ and despite deeper socioeconomic changes under the British, the family has continued to be an influential unit. Therefore, due to the historical nature of Palestinian family and society prior to 1948, the process of economic development, institutionalization, leadership, and political party-building could not be divorced from family and family alliances. The leadership of the Husaynis and the Nashashibis in the pre-1948 Nationalist Movement is simply a manifestation of the role of family. Even when the Palestinians confronted the British mandate, both at the village and city levels, they sought protection in the family as a socioeconomic political unit. They found it available, and used it as an indigenous means to resist occupation. The working Palestinian population in 1936 went on strike for six months by depending to a large extent on the family to provide food and many necessities. Even during the 1936–1939 rebellion in Palestine, the family played an essential role by providing food, clothing, protection, sanctuary, and information to the rebels.

On the eve of their exodus, the Palestinians had a variety of political, social, cultural, and economic institutions that were developing at a very rapid pace. These challenged the family and forced it to give up many of its functions to other, more superior forms of organization. But the family, as it stood in 1948, remained a strong and viable socioeconomic institution.

The nature of Palestinian society and family determined at the outset, particularly after the destruction of all formal institutions, the form Palestinian survival would take. It is clear that social ties and group existence would have had no chance to be reconstructed without the family. This particular reality determined my entire theoretical approach and my research focus on the family as the central agency of Palestinian continuity in the diaspora.

Family in the Middle East

A study of the family is a critical part of the understanding...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• INTRODUCTION
• 1. STATELESSNESS IN CONTEXT
• 2. PALESTINIANS BECOME REFUGEES
• 3. THE DISPLACED INTELLIGENTSIA
• 4. THE PLACE OF THE PEASANTRY
• 5. THE FAMILY AS A CROSS-NATIONAL ENTITY
• 6. FAMILY NETWORKS: SOCIAL DYNAMICS AND SURVIVAL
• 7. THE SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF VILLAGE AND TOWN SURVIVAL IN KUWAIT
• 8. VILLAGE AND TOWN FUNDS AND ASSOCIATIONS
• 9. NEW CRISIS IN THE DIASPORA
• 10. CONCLUSION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX