ABSTRACT
The Palestinian peasantry constituted the second major group to arrive in Kuwait in the early 1950s. It had different, more difficult problems than the intelligentsia had. This chapter explains how the need for income to provide basic needs for self and family forced the peasantry to take quite a risky route to find employment. It presents an account of the experiences and early survival responses of both the Palestinians who took refuge in the West Bank and the residents of the West Bank who chose to migrate to Kuwait. After 1948, the majority was thrown into makeshift refugee camps, and those who were not uprooted, that is, the residents of the West Bank, were severely hit economically. The majority of the unskilled laborers and peasants living in the West Bank and looking for a way out found it in the natural extension of geography, culture, and history which Kuwait provided.
