RAWABI, West Bank - Dusk has fallen on a terraced hillside, and workers clearing the red earth hurry to finish planting trees in the twilight, their labor the initial step in the construction of the first-ever planned Palestinian city.

The city, with a construction price tag of some $350 million, already has its city limits registered, a name - Rawabi, Arabic for "hills" - and funding from the government of Qatar. It's located about five miles north of Ramallah.

The project's Ramallah-based developers, who plan to start building soon, hail the project as a prized and much-needed example of Palestinian economic development. Israeli officials are among those citing it as a symbol of Palestinian progress.

"At the heart of this, it's about building a nation," says Bashar Masri, chairman of the board of the Bayti Real Estate Investment Co., which is running the project. "We have dreamed about a liberal, advanced state with a higher standard of living, and this project is part of those aspirations."

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