Karmi was born in Jerusalem, and in her 2002 autobiography, In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story, she describes growing up in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Katamon, with its mixture of Christian and Muslim Palestinians. Among the family friends and neighbors was Khalil al-Sakakini and his family. With her family she was forced to flee in the 1948 Nakba. The family eventually settled in the neighbourhood of Golders Green, in London, England, where her father, Hasan Sa'id Karmi, worked for the BBC Arabic service.
She studied and became a doctor of medicine, graduating from the University of Bristol in 1964. Initially Karmi practised as a physician, specialising in the health and social conditions of ethnic minorities, migrants and asylum seekers.[2] Since 1972 she has been politically active for the Palestinian cause and gained a doctorate in the history of Arabic medicine from London University.[3]
In 1998 she visited her childhood home in Katamon for the first time since 1948.
Al-Hassan, Ahmad Y.; Ghada Karmi & Nizar Namnum (eds.) Proceedings of the First International Symposium for the History of Arabic Science April 5-12, 1976. Volume II. Papers in European Languages. Aleppo: University of Aleppo, Institute for the History of Arabic Science, 1978.
Karmi, Ghada: Multicultural Health Care: Current Practice and Future Policy in Medical EducationISBN 0-7279-0940-1 British Medical Association, London, 1995,
Karmi, Ghada (Ed.) with a contribution by Edward Said: Jerusalem Today: What Future for the Peace Process?ISBN 0-86372-226-1 Ithaca Press, 1996