The Peace on The Horizon - 75 Years after The World War 2 in the Middle East (78)

 

(Japanese Version)

(Arabic Version)

 

(contents)

 

Chapter 3 The grace of Allah – Oil boom (15)

 

078 Searching for wealth – Migrants rushing into Gulf countries (3/4)

As mentioned before, Palestinian refugee teacher Shatilas moved to Kuwait in 1956 with his son Amin. The family of Zahra was escaped from Elat in Israel to the Jordanian town Aqaba in the same year. In 1963, Zahra was sent to Kuwait when he was only 15 years old because the life in Jordan was not easy at all. He became a clerk of a microscopic shop.

 

Kuwait accepted large numbers of Palestinians under the humanitarian principle to support refugees. However, the Kuwaiti people did not sympathize with refugees at all, They abused Palestinians as a labor force working with cheap wages. It was like a modern slavery. Kuwaiti people who moved to flourishing urban area from shabby tent life in desert was illiterate and barbarous. They treated the migrant Palestinians who came to Kuwait in search for wealth with cruel and tyrannical behavior. Zahra stood still and remitted most of his cheap salary to his family in Jordan. In the same year,  Khatib, the son of merchant in Amman, came to work in Iraq when he was 24 years old with the knowledge of accounting learned in his family business. He had similar experience as that of Zahra.

 

(To be continued ----)

 

 

Areha Kazuya

(From an ordinary citizen in the cloud)