Worldview: Fayyad building framework for Palestinian statehood

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Serious efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been on hold until after the U.S. elections. Both sides thought President Obama couldn't focus on the peace process until then, although people here are debating whether he will engage more deeply after his party's electoral losses.

But there is one official who hasn't been hanging on the U.S. vote: Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. He is too busy working on the second half of his two-year program to build a Palestinian state.

Fayyad's project is called "Homestretch to Freedom: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State," and it is due to be completed in August 2011. His plan is in sync with the goal set by Obama, along with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, to reach a peace deal by next September.

Of course, few believe negotiations will produce Palestinian statehood in a year's time, and right now the process is in limbo. Yet Fayyad, a compact, English-speaking, no-nonsense economist who formerly worked for the International Monetary Fund, refuses to wait.

He is busy upgrading infrastructure, refurbishing schools, and bolstering the unified Palestinian security forces that have cracked down on crime and on members of Hamas in the West Bank. He insists that all security forces come under government control and opposes violent resistance to Israel. He has done more to create the physical framework of a future state and institute a transparent budget than any previous Palestinian official.

"Building to statehood is a key job of the Palestinian Authority, which should have been undertaken from day one," he told me. We sat in his neat, spare, attractively furnished Ramallah office, and he said, with a passion unusual for a bureaucrat: "We felt it was important to create a positive dynamic that would begin to change the status quo."

Surveys show that the majority in both Israel and Palestinian areas still favors a two-state solution, but neither side believes it is possible. "Our idea was to transform statehood from the abstract to the concrete," Fayyad explained.

You can see the results all over the West Bank. Ramallah is booming, with new public and private office buildings and apartment complexes. The criminal gangs that haunted Nablus are gone, and business is picking up in Hebron and Jenin. Work is proceeding on the first planned Palestinian town of Rawabi, near Ramallah.