UCLA

This dissertation is an examination of the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) and its role as a diasporic Palestinian organization deeply situated in Palestinian social movements. Applying the term diaspora to Palestinian dispersal is a debated identification given the ongoing objectives for Palestinian return and the end of Zionism’s settler-colonial project. I argue that diasporic frameworks are a means to analyze the flow and exchange of ideas, culture, resources, and politics that can connect Palestinians, and that GUPS acted as a nexus of these connections. Chapter one outlines the debates regarding scholarship on Palestinian diasporas. Chapter two is an ethnography of my research methods. Chapters three, four, and five discuss the formation of GUPS and its international growth as a diasporic institution. These chapters also analyze the structural pressures operating on GUPS at the local and international levels and how actors responded to these challenges. This dissertation relies heavily on oral histories I compiled and published oral histories compiled by other scholars. In turn, I offer an anthropological and historical analysis of the material conditions at hand that were acted upon by generations of Palestinian students to advance the Palestinian liberation movement.