Nadim Bawalsa's study is a groundbreaking and timely book that recasts the Palestinian struggle for self-determination as a transnational phenomenon with roots in the early twentieth century. Drawing on extensive, multinational archival research and interviews with Palestinian diaspora communities in Latin America, Bawalsa argues that those historical communities first articulated the right of return not in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, but in the interwar period, as Palestinian migrants faced increasing discrimination and denial of citizenship under British rule.
Bawalsa begins by tracing the history of Palestinian migration to Latin America, which began in the late nineteenth century and surged in the early twentieth century, as Palestinians sought to escape economic hardship and political persecution. The majority of Palestinian migrants settled in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico, where they established thriving communities that continue to this day.
Bawalsa shows that Palestinian migrants soon encountered challenges in their new Latin American homes. The British Mandate authorities, in collaboration with the Zionist movement, worked to deny Palestinian migrants citizenship rights. Bawalsa argues that the British government and its extended empire created an exclusionary practice through a series of laws and regulations that made it increasingly difficult for Palestinians to prove their eligibility for citizenship. As a result, many Palestinian migrants were left stateless and further vulnerable to exploitation.
In response to this discrimination, Palestinian migrants in countries such as Chile began to organize and advocate for their rights. Through extensive examination of periodical and other archival sources, Bawalsa demonstrates how the Palestinian diaspora formed social and cultural clubs, political organizations, and newspapers. They also petitioned local and international governments, demanding justice and recognition of their Palestinian citizenship.
Bawalsa centers the condition of being in diaspora as foundational to identity formation and political activism. He argues that these transnational networks of activism played a crucial role in shaping the Palestinian national movement. Through their struggles to secure citizenship and protect their rights, Palestinian migrants in Latin America helped to forge a sense of shared identity and destiny among Palestinians around the world.
In particular, Bawalsa highlights the role of Palestinian newspapers in the development of Palestinian national consciousness. These newspapers provided a forum for Palestinians to share their stories, discuss their political aspirations, and build solidarity with other Palestinians around the world. In the 1920s and 1930s, Palestinian newspapers in Latin America began to publish articles and editorials demanding that Palestinians be allowed to return to their homeland. Bawalsa shows how in those papers and elsewhere, Palestinian migrants in Latin America were among the first to articulate the right of return.
Bawalsa organizes the book in six chapters, each detailing themes in the emigration and immigration of Palestinians. After providing the historical, colonial contexts for the post-World War I Palestinian exodus to Latin America, the work examines the legal and political forces that helped to shape the community's identity and related activism. Two chapters focus on the stories of Palestinians in Mexico and Chile and how communities in those countries related to their new nations and secured their economic and social positions.
Bawalsa's book is a significant contribution to the field of Palestinian, migration, and diaspora studies in Latin American and the Middle East. It challenges the traditional view of the Palestinian national movement as a monolithic entity rooted in the exodus following 1948. Instead, Bawalsa shows that the Palestinian struggle for self-determination has a long and transnational history. Grounded in his own family's history and struggles, Bawalsa's book is also timely and relevant to the current political climate, serving to further complicate and contextualize our understanding of contemporary events.
This study is a fine work that has broad application and relevance well beyond its Middle Eastern–Latin American context to scholars of studies of colonialism, migration, and the formation of transnational diasporic communities.
