Page 217 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

214 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

political upheaval, the possibility of coups and revolts, and the machinations of
dieir foes without. The Uitlanders, lacking all rights, fear the loss of their
livelihoods through sudden, arbitrary deportation. The native inhabitants fear
that the Uitlanders will overwhelm them with numbers. Discontent is perhaps
more widespread than fear. Some rulers envy their richer neighbours, others

their more powerful subjects. Emigre Arabs resent the privileges of the native
tribesmen; the tribesmen resent the hauteur of the emigres. Non-Arab Uitlan­
ders chafe at their inferior status, and the poorer amongst them covet the
greater rewards enjoyed by the unskilled native Arabs. They in their turn
despise these Uitlanders for not being Arab, even while they profit from their

labour and skills. There are, of course, as observed earlier, gradations of
feeling among the several immigrant groups, and between them and the
indigenous inhabitants, gradations which do not necessarily correspond to
differences in financial reward or status. Persian, Pathan and Baluchi
labourers, who work the hardest and are paid the least, are not unduly troubled
by the degree of wealth possessed by the ruling families and their circles, or by

the discrimination practised against them because they are not Arabs. Neither
experience is novel to them or to the ways of Oriental society in general. Omani
and Yemeni labourers fare a little better because they are Arabs, but the
improvement is hardly noteworthy. The Indians and skilled Pakistanis, who
tend to live in close-knit communities, secure in their self-regard, are content

with their roles as merchants, clerks and craftsmen, making substantial profits
and a comfortable living from the profligacy of others.
It is the emigre Arab community in each state which most exhibits discontent
with its lot. Whatever the differences that divide them, Palestinian from
Egyptian, Egyptian from Iraqi, Iraqi from Syrian, the northern Arabs are
united in their belief in the superiority of their attainments, intellectual, social

and political, over those of the Gulf Arabs. Being of such a mind, it galls them
that they possess no civil or political rights, no legal standing, no customary
recourse in these states, but are victims of the same exclusivism which dictates
the lop-sided distribution of the oil revenues. The rulers of the Gulf states have

made it extremely difficult for immigrants, whether Arab or non-Arab, to
obtain local nationality, although the government of the UAE, alarmed at the
declining proportion of native Arab inhabitants to Uitlanders in the population,
has of late been granting citizenship to Omanis and other peninsular Arabs
after three to five years’ residence. Citizenship, however, is still strictly denied

to Arabs from outside the peninsula.
As if the fears and troubles already mentioned were not enough to preoccupy
the governments and peoples of the Gulf states, they have exposed themselves
to further vexation by allowing themselves to be dragged into the Palestinian
imbroglio. Until the June war of 1967 the AraK-Israeli dispute had impinged

verv little if at all, upon the lives of the Gulf’s inhabitants. That t e 1SPU
existed they could hardly but have been aware, whether from the vociferauon