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For the estimated 3.2 million Palestinians who are scattered across the world from Israel, Jordan and the West Bank (see map page 32) to Lebanon, the Persian Gulf, Europe and the U.S., Arafat's rocket to recognition was a heady event. While other peoples have emerged from colonial serfdom to independence since World War II, the proud Palestinians have reversed the process by becoming exiles, refugees and second-class citizens. "We are a people in total calamity," says Dr. Fayez Sayegh, a Palestinian adviser to Kuwait's U.N. delegation. "And it happened to us in a period when 70 other peoples got out of colonial imperialism."
Although deprived of a homeland, most are educated and some are reasonably well off. Palestinians hold key advisory positions in the governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the small sheikdoms of the gulf, serve as teachers, doctors, engineers and administrators throughout the Arab world. Sometimes referred to as the "Jews of the Arab world," they form an elite—if not by choice, then by circumstance. "We are hard workers," says a Palestinian journalist. "Nobody employs a Palestinian because he is a Palestinian. He is employed because he is better." Palestinians have a reputation in the Arab world for their drive to educate their children. "We lost everything," explains Dr. Chafic Haddad, now a Beirut physician. "What else was there to do?"
When Westerners refer to Palestinians, though, they usually mean the 644,093 Arabs who live in 63 refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the occupied West Bank and Gaza. These displaced people are supported by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency on a meager $88 million budget that is largely underwritten by the U.S. ($28.6 million this year) and European Community ($24 million). The oil-rich Arab nations that last week voted $2.3 billion for the fight against Israel gave only $2.1 million to UNRWA last year and have contributed just $26 million since 1950, when the agency began its operations. They maintain that the Western nations created Israel and caused the refugee problem, and thus should bear most of the financial burden. They also argue that as host countries they provide services in addition to money. Many Palestinians who can afford to live elsewhere remain in the camps to help keep alive a sense of community. They cling doggedly to their UNRWA ration cards. Since they have no Palestinian passports, the cards are the only physical evidence they have of their nationality.
Palestinian Writer Fawaz Turki, author of a moving exposition of refugee life called To Be a Palestinian, explains the phenomenon: "To them, the present was insanity, not a natural continuum of what was. To relate to it, they would transform it into an arrested