Invisible Histories

Abstract

This thesis explores the materialisation of Palestine as a liberation ideal in the Gulf, reading this liberation ideal within the context of internal political developments. Focussing on the time period between the mid-1930s and mid-1970s, it works with themes of anti-colonialism, national liberation, and revolutionary transformation to map connections between peoples from Palestine and the Gulf. At the turn of the 20th century Palestine and a number of Gulf locations are under British colonial mandatory or protectorate systems, and this establishes the historical background to this study. The call to liberation which manifests through the Palestinian struggle is deeply embedded in people’s histories of the Gulf, bursting out at the surface in moments of great tumult. There is a general lack of work on social histories of the Gulf region in English language scholarship, and this dearth is also reflected in popular knowledge and media coverage. However, an exciting array of recent scholarship has begun to fill this gap, and this work joins these efforts to trace largely invisible pasts, the suggestions of which linger and persist through the present.