Her father, according to one account, "was expelled at gunpoint; her mother, who was studying in Germany at the time, was unable to return and the couple reunited in Jordan before moving to Kuwait, where Abulhawa was born in 1970".

[6] Her parents split shortly after her birth and Abulhawa's childhood was turbulent, moving between Kuwait, the United States, Jordan, and Palestine.

[10][11][12] She is involved in the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and as a speaker for Al Awda, the Palestinian right of return coalition.

[13] Abulhawa said the BDS movement was "one of the most effective ways to promote Palestinian rights and achieve justice against Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing".

Then imagine that on the day in which Jews engage in solemn remembrance of their greatest collective wound, television shows choose to feature German sons and daughters of Nazis in a discussion expressing differing views on whether or not and/or how Germany should deal with the memory of the genocide their country committed.

[18]On 29 November 2024, Abulhawa was invited by the Oxford Union to debated the motion, “This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide”.

Her work appeared in newspapers and magazines, including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Internationalist, The Christian Science Monitor and more.

Her debut novel The Scar of David (2006), republished as Mornings in Jenin (2010), is a multigenerational family epic spanning five countries and more than sixty years, focuses on the effects on Palestinians of the Israeli occupation.