Palestinian-American businessman Sam Bahour has built a modern shopping centre in the West Bank and been the catalyst for a fledgling hi-tech industry to build economic foundations for a future state of Palestine.
But after 11 years in the West Bank, Mr Bahour's dream of service to his ancestral and adopted home, like the very idea of viable Palestinian statehood, is approaching a bitter end. He is being kicked out by Israel as part of an unprecedented crackdown on foreign passport-holders of Palestinian origin living in the occupied territory.
Mr Bahour, a 41-year-old father of two, was hoping the jolt experienced in recent months by acquaintances wouldn't happen to him. But on August 29, when he went to renew his tourist visa, as he has been doing every three months since 1995, an Israeli soldier gave him a permit for only one month and wrote in his passport 'last permit'.
Thousands of other Palestinian expatriates who have been living in the West Bank for years, many of whom have raised families there, face a similar threat of de facto expulsion. Their only apparent hope for reprieve lies in the uncertain prospect of an improvement in Palestinian-Israeli relations from the planned formation of a Palestinian national unity government to replace the cabinet dominated by the radical Hamas movement that resigned last week.
After years of allowing the Palestinian expatriates to enter and leave the West Bank on tourist visas, Israel began denying them re-entry earlier this year. Israel's interior ministry played down the change, describing it as 'a refreshment of procedures'.
But Shlomo Dror, spokesman for the army's Co-ordinator of Activities for the Territories, has confirmed that the mounting number of exclusions reflects a new policy under which 'thousands' of expatriates will have to leave the West Bank. Occupied by Israel during the 1967 war, the West Bank is home to 2.4 million Palestinians. Four hundred thousand Israelis settlers live there in violation of international law and the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert continues to encourage more Israelis to arrive and expand settlements.