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says Danin. Israeli officials are positively disposed towards Rawabi, but it's still taken years to resolve sovereignty and governance issues around necessities like water, and a single access road. Such Israeli inertia was apparently at the heart of Obama's concerns back in 2010, and sources say that the president has discussed the issue of the access road with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on multiple occasions.
Back in Washington, I asked Masri if he believed the Israelis understood the potential importance of Rawabi. "I really don't know," he said. "Their statements are neutral to positive. But their actions are neutral to negative."
And then there's the larger inertia. What meaning does a place like Rawabi have if it sits in the middle of a still-unresolved conflict, or if Palestinian economic self-improvement stands in contrast to an all-pervading political stasis -- or even political backsliding? Today, Rawabi is significant because of its novelty. But if there's a breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, perhaps enabled by a growing West Bank economy and a permanent end in terrorism, it could take on an importance much larger than itself.
On the drive out of the valley, where the highway swerves past the pillbox with the

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