She has written on Palestinian issues in newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian, The Nation and Journal of Palestine Studies.

Her father, Hasan Sa'id Karmi was Palestinian while her mother was Syrian;[1] she was the youngest child with an older brother and sister.

[3] The family eventually settled in Golders Green, in London, where her father worked for the BBC Arabic Service as a translator and broadcaster.

Initially, she practised as a physician, specialising in the health and social conditions of ethnic minorities, migrants and asylum seekers.

She became a supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization, [5] telling Donald Macintyre of The Independent in 2005 that she gained a "burning sense of injustice" around the events of her childhood.

[4] In her memoir, Return, Karmi describes a visit to her former home in Jerusalem following an invitation from Steven Erlanger, then the Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, who realised his apartment was built onto the Karmi family's house described in her book In Search of Fatima.

In an interview with Executive Intelligence Review (reprinted in Middle East Policy Journal), Karmi stated that:"There is actually nothing — repeat, nothing — positive about the existence of Israel, as far as the Arabs are concerned.

"[9] At the Palestinian Return Conference held at SOAS in January 2011, Karmi referred to the creation of Israel as involving the dispossession and theft of a whole country: "The only way to reverse that is on the basis of rights and justice; that is the right of return of the refugees and the dispossessed and the exiles back to their homeland."