Salam Fayyad, a soft-spoken economist who has taken on the daunting job of prime minister of the Palestinian Authority's emergency government, is a rare feature on the Middle Eastern leadership landscape: a political moderate and man of integrity who believes in the power of rational action and persuasion.
But it is an open question as to how far those qualities will take him in the face of the self-righteous Islamic fundamentalist Hamas movement.
Bringing order to the West Bank and liberating Palestinians from their fears of masked militiamen is the top priority of his government, which started work this week, Mr Fayyad said in an interview on Wednesday.
'I have a lot of different roles, but in my way of thinking the mission is one mission, to restore law and order, at first in the West Bank. That is my highest priority, that is where the focus is,' Mr Fayyad said.
'I want everyone to feel secure, I want people to begin to get a sense of hope about the future and to feel they can move about without any sense of fear.'
The chaos is a legacy of Yasser Arafat, who facilitated the growth of the militias after the outbreak of the second intifada uprising against Israel in 2000. Most of the problems emanate from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade which is loosely affiliated with president Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement