I recall reading about how there were lots of good hardworking Palestinian college students in technical subjects in places like Egypt in the good old days. For instance al-Rantisi was an Egyptian trained doctor while Arafat studied civil engineering in Cairo University.
So obviously those two guys came back to Palestine and made their careers there. Also, many Palestinians who were permanent residents in the Gulf and worked in technical jobs there got kicked out after the war of 1991.
But I was wondering, was there a lot of “irreversible” brain drain? E.g. was there a lot of people who stayed let’s say in Egypt or in some other Arab country outside the Gulf and became assimilated? Or maybe was there a lot of technical graduates emigrating to Europe or America? Or did it all so work out that the vast majority of all those smart, productive people gotten herded back into the Palestinian territories?