HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028715 hills, valleys, and rising apartment blocks -- the future he was in the process of building -- stretched out in front of him. "On a good, clear day, you can see Tel Aviv, Ashdod, and Ashkelon," he told me. "One-third of Palestine and Israel." Rawabi is in the second-largest, yet most sparsely- populated Area A in the West Bank -- from the terrace, which faces away from Ateret, you can see expanses of mostly-empty hills. Perhaps in Masri's mind, they are awaiting Rawabis of their own. When I returned to Washington, I asked him in a phone interview if he viewed his project as the first of many such planned cities in Palestine. "I always say our success is measured not by how many homes we sell. It is measured when a second Rawabi is established," he told me. Standing on the terrace, I asked him if his willingness to undertake such a massive project reflected any optimism about the coming years -- no one invests this much time, money, and energy into something if they expect war is on the horizon. "This project is built for today's politics," he replied. "If it gets a little worse, or a little better -- fine. If it gets really bad, we're in trouble. If it doesn't, then great. We're not waiting on a breakthrough." He estimated that Israeli obstruction had delayed the project by a year and a half The bureaucratic inertia could continue: