IF YOU ACT LIKE A STATE YOU ARE ONE:

There is rubble on every other street, and plenty of empty, trash-strewn lots along thoroughfares that could have looked the same half a century ago. But the signs of economic vitality are unmistakable, and while Ramallah remains, in the words of one observer, "a five-star prison," it is also clearly striving to take its place among the national capitals of the world.

If there is one person most closely associated with this city's ambitions, it is the man who greets me with a pleasant handshake and a businessman's smile, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. His popularity extends from the Palestinian public to the Western halls of power, even to the Israeli government, where he is referred to approvingly. Yet his position is on the line, caught between the potential demands of a unity government with Hamas and the rising expectations for Palestinian statehood ignited by his government's bold, some say reckless, move at the United Nations last September.

Fayyad seems undeterred. "We have to believe that this is something that can happen and indeed will happen," he said, perching on the edge of the sofa in his well-appointed office. "It is definitely overdue, and the more that people really begin to view this as an inevitability, the more likely it is going to happen sooner. And when I say 'people,' I do not mean only Palestinians, but also Israelis."

Fayyad seems intent on -- to borrow a phrase most commonly associated with Israel's settlement building -- creating facts on the ground. For him, the appearance of statehood lies not in banners and proclamations, but in the ordinary functioning of government: the imperatives of paying bills, closing budget deficits, reversing decades of mismanagement and corruption that had plagued the P.A. and diminished its standing with its own people.

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