Maybe Ramallah is to Palestine what New York is to the United States. Here there is none of the pretense of a planned capital, with its carefully placed monuments and imposing facades -- the cold, stone markers of a nation's official narrative. No, each Ramallah street is an organic outgrowth of another, its gems (Rukab's Ice Cream, your favorite shawarma carver) bearing no plaques or polish. They just are.

Yet something is clawing at Ramallah's sense of itself. One glance at its overcrowded streets or the unbreachable barrier between it and the aspirant Palestinian capital of Jerusalem, and you can see it: circumstance is demanding more of this city than it is or wants to be.

For all intents and purposes, Ramallah has become the Palestinians' stand-in capital. Arafat's tomb is here, as are the various houses of officialdom -- ministries, dignitaries' homes, foreign liaison offices. And the further away Jerusalem becomes to its tens of thousands of residents (I can't seem to get an exact figure), the more buildings, cars, and hopes seem to descend on Ramallah.



If you build it, will they come? Signs like this are all over Ramallah. They herald coming attractions like the "Dunia" (or World) Trade Center or this ultra-modern "Commercial Building," completion date 3/5/2006. When I chanced upon it (on May 24, 2008) I asked a groundskeeper about the delay. "Oh, it's finished," he assured me. "We're just waiting to sign deals with the tenants."

And so it goes in Ramallah. Some large part of the millions coming out of the Bethlehem investment conference is earmarked for housing projects in and around Ramallah. Who will inhabit these?

One theory I've heard is that the projects are literally laying the foundation for compromising the Palestinian right of return. The housing units, goes the theory, will go to returning Palestinian refugees, mostly from neighboring Arab states.

It's speculation, of course, but the logic sounds familiar. Israeli settlements, by some estimates, are nearly half-empty, their extra units deemed necessary to accommodate "natural growth" (read: future Jewish immigrants).

React: samer@helpUPA.com