KUWAIT CITY, 8 March 2003 — Kuwait City’s bustling Palestinian community is gone. Egyptians, Indians and Syrians live in the neighborhoods where the diaspora flourished until it was gutted by Iraq’s 1990 invasion of the emirate.

Nearly 13 years later, the 50,000 Palestinians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin left here believe any bad blood with the Kuwaitis is well behind them as they face the spectacle of a new showdown between Iraq and the US.

“Life goes on. The Kuwaitis realized we were for Kuwait. We were victims of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein,” said Islam M. Al-Sharaa, 40, a Jordanian-Palestinian who survived the 1991 Gulf War here. “I don’t think anything bad will happen here now.”

Then, many of the 400,000-strong Palestinian community, widely credited with building and running the infrastructure of this modern state, fled or were expelled, as Kuwaitis accused them of collaborating with Iraq during the occupation.