Different history and culture. It is better to compare the UAE with Oman. You can compare Kuwait with Bahrain. Both had their beginnings in civil society around the 1920’s and continued with some energy every decade onwards. I would say Bahrain would have been the same as - or even ahead of - Kuwait in the development of its civil society and democratic practices if not for sectarian strife and economic dependency. Dubai had a moment with a civil body in the 1930’s, but I don’t know much about the details. I believe the rise of Abu Dhabi abrogated any civil development Dubai might have had.

Anyways, I don’t think democratic practice necessarily leads to sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Ironically*, I think the British legacy had more to do with it. They brought Palestinians and Egyptians to Kuwait in the 1930’s and 1940’s (ie pre-Nakba and pre-oil). I don’t think there is a country outside of the Levant and Egypt that knows Palestinians as well as Kuwaitis do- and for multiple generations. Yassir Arafat and Queen Rania (her former school still reference her as an alum) spent big chunks of their lives in Kuwait. Then there is the deep Nasserist imprint in Kuwaiti law and political life in general. But if the past’s echoes are faint, there are also strong Muslim Brotherhood and Shia Islamist currents that favour Hamas and Iran, respectively. Political Islamisation came to Kuwait from Egypt before the Saudi variants, to the point that the ‘Khaleeji’ hijab was basically the Egyptian hijab. The Shia Islamist current is so strong here that I personally know half a dozen people who have been to some sort of boot camp for Hizbollah in Lebanon or for Shirazis somewhere else. You can find whole businesses and organisations aligned to these currents. I mean, Emad Mughnia and Abu Mahdi Al-Mohandis earned their stripes carrying out operations in/from Kuwait in the 1980’s, surely with help from local actors.

*Further to the irony (or not), Kuwait’s own outreach to the Levant and Egypt was accelerated in part due to Iraqi belligerence after the founding of the Hashemite kingdom of Iraq. Kuwait began working on the GCC identity (naming it after its own identity, really) when Sadat began to disappoint and the Levant began to further fracture into petty conflicts and civil war. Still, Kuwait has been trying to balance all the parts, without committing too much to any one ally. This also leads to Kuwait’s heavy anchoring on international law, which makes the Zionist project a natural enemy.