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Many of the original founders of the P.L.O. began their careers and formed their revolutionary strategy in Kuwait in the late 1950s, including Yasser Arafat, who was a civil engineer in Kuwait's public-works ministry while organizing Fatah on the side. It was Kuwait that arranged the infamous meeting between the P.L.O.'s United Nations representative and U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young; Kuwait that refused the nomination of an American ambassador because he had previously served as consul in Jerusalem; Kuwait that broke diplomatic relations with West Germany in 1965, when Bonn recognized Israel; Kuwait that dutifully deducted a tithe from the salaries of Palestinians working for the Kuwaiti government for remittance to the P.L.O.; and Kuwait that coughed up millions whenever Yasser Arafat cried bankruptcy -- at least $60 million over the past six years alone.
"With a record like that," says Ahmad, a Palestinian schoolteacher, "who would not feel betrayed by the P.L.O.'s support of Iraq? I would not deny that some Palestinians have looted and done despicable things in Kuwait, but most of us are against what Saddam did. That won't matter, of course. We will be punished for the stupidity of our chief of state -- and Arafat will continue his life as a celebrity. The Kuwaitis will say that they will look at each of our cases one by one" -- which indeed is what the Kuwaiti leadership says -- "but in the end I am sure that almost all of us will be kicked out."
Booting the Palestinians will be painful, which is where foreign policy comes in. Many Kuwaitis expect -- and would welcome -- an indefinite U.S. troop presence on their soil. "Reflagging" the effort by adding Arab troops could make the action more palatable, but "it is the Americans we need," says a Kuwaiti official, "more for pretext than for security. Do you think the U.S. will want a potential Palestinian terrorist threat close to its troops? We don't." There were more than 300,000 Palestinians in Kuwait before Aug. 2. "If there are 100,000 left a year from the end of this, I will be surprised," says a senior official at Kuwait's Higher Planning Council.
Will the radical measures planned in exile be accepted at home? Rather than propel change, the shock of invasion may hinder it. "To cope with what has happened," says Hasan al-Ebraheem, "many have come to think of this time as a temporary setback, like an earthquake. Psychologically, people will want to recreate the past as exactly as they can in order to forget what has happened. That is what we must resist. This is a golden opportunity, the invasion's silver lining. If we give in to sentiment and let the old ways come back while saying that we'll reach the hard issues later, we will never reach them."
To retard backsliding, Fawzi al-Sultan's planners in Washington are effectively rigging the assumptions. When the group's health expert, or the men from public works, for example, draft their recovery plans, the first question is always, How many people are we supposed to plan for? "When the working hypothesis is 1.3 million, tops," says al-Sultan, "the answers come out in a certain way. Lock those premises in, and the shape of the society will change. Demography is everything."