They should, however I had some problems (possibly related to the fact that I do most of my hacking related to this project in a train, the only "free" time ATM)

To be more specific, iptable_nat and its dependencies insert to the kernel fine, iptables binary can be used to manipulate the ip_tables in kernel. iwconfig (apt-get install wireless-tools) can be used to setup ad-hoc network to which my laptop can connect but for some reason I could not even ping my N900 (much less connect to the openssh running on it or route data to internet and back)

EDIT: See the hotspot_backend.py that will be the script the UI will call (one needs sudo anyway to execute these commands and the UI will not run as root...) also see plan.txt for some of my first ideas on how things should work.