KEY POINTS:
There aren't many people who would build a replica of La Rotonda, Antonio Palladio's 16th century high Renaissance architectural masterpiece, on top of a mountain overlooking the troubled and impoverished West Bank city of Nablus.
There are even fewer who would choose to complete it during the second
intifada, when Palestinian militants and armoured Israeli forces were trading daily fire a mere 15 minutes' drive down the hill in the city's casbah and the teeming alleys of the Balata refugee camp.
But at 74, Munib al-Masri has the self confidence - and the money - not to worry about what many people would or wouldn't do.
Not only did he decide to hire 500 local workers to build a jaw-droppingly ostentatious home on the edge of his beloved Nablus to return to after decades as a much-travelled top international businessman, he made the domed mansion a floor higher than the Palladian original in Vicenza "because I have a large family".
And he filled it with his stunning, if crazily eclectic, lifetime collection of artistic treasures.
A power networker who guided Tony Blair round Nablus this year and lunched with France's President Nicolas Sarkozy in Bethlehem this week, Masri could live anywhere, of course. That he has chosen instead to come home to Nablus is symbolic of the ardent nationalism he professes.
The multi-millionaire philanthropist, close friend for 40 years of the late Yasser Arafat (whose offer of the prime ministership of the Palestinian Authority he turned down three times) and opponent of violence says his work is increasingly focused on seeing a Palestinian state before he dies.
"Before I go, I want to see an independent Palestine living side by side with Israel. For the last 45 years I have worked for peace with Israel and I think the Israelis are missing a big chance. They're not really realising they have to live with us - two groups of people living on one ground."
Masri left home at 17, a wide-eyed youth from one of Nablus's most notable families, to study at the University of Texas.
He returned to the Middle East in 1956 with an Master of Science in government and geology, a brand new blue and white Chevrolet, a blonde American wife and a baby.
He would work for the American-owned Phillips Petroleum as regional president; but he had already founded what was to become his most important company, the Engineering and Development Group, Edgo.
"Arafat was my hero," he explains, adding that for more than 40 years "we slept together, laughed together, joked together, cried together. He was my hero even when he screwed up".
Masri's refusals of the premiership were based in part on his short-lived experience as a minister in the immediate post-Oslo Palestinian Authority.
"I said, 'Abu Ammar, I love you dearly. I want to be your friend for life. But it's very difficult to work for you'. He was my hero but he knew nothing about management."
But Masri was at Arafat's side urging the path of moderation at crucial moments, like that in 1988 when the PLO leader finally announced the recognition of Israel, and he has no doubts that without him "we wouldn't be here".
In the early 90s the Nablus man rejected the suggestion of the then backbencher Yitzhak Rabin that he would make a more suitable president than Arafat. "I told him: 'No one can consummate this except Arafat'."
Twenty years later, Masri depicts his business activities here and his venture into politics - the recently formed Palestine Forum, facing the uphill struggle of representing a "silent majority" outside Fatah and Hamas - as geared to realising that dream.
The company he formed, Padico (Palestine Development and Investment Company), with the stated "primary goal ... to develop the infrastructure of Palestine", owns among much else a 30 per cent stake in PalTel, the telecommunications and mobile phone company operating in Gaza and the West Bank.
He argues that even within the severe Israeli restrictions - to which he expresses vigorous opposition - depressing the Palestinian economy, it is important to create as many jobs as possible to prevent Palestinians being driven out by economic pressure.
"I deeply believe through prosperity we could stay our ground. We don't emigrate. During the first intifada per-capita income was US$1800 ($2370). Now we are below US$1000. If you create prosperity people will stay and resist occupation." By resistance, he says, he does not mean violence.
As a man who can meet Mahmoud Abbas, whom he strongly backed as both Prime Minister and President, and Khaled Meshaal, the exiled Hamas leader, whenever he wants, Masri has striven to avert the Palestinian split.
Before the municipal elections in Nablus in 2005 - which Hamas won by a landslide - he proposed that the factions agree to an allocation of seats in which Hamas would have a minority. Hamas, he says, agreed but Fatah, fatally for his hopes of making Nablus a model of consensus, did not.
Equally, after Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections to its own surprise "we sent messages to Khaled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh saying, 'Please don't form a government. Stay on the Legislative Council [the Parliament] since you don't want to recognise Israel'."
Now his Palestine Forum is strongly urging reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas once again. Masri has welcomed the ceasefire in Gaza but argues that the deal with Hamas cannot be left in a dangerous vacuum.
First he wants to see a fresh agreement between Hamas and Fatah, which be believes in the end will enhance rather than diminish Abbas as a negotiating partner with Israel.
And secondly he argues that Israel must start making rapid concessions to Abbas - including a truce in the West Bank, the lifting of "four or five" major checkpoints and real progress in the current negotiations between Israel and Abbas on a future Palestinian state.
The alternative, he fears, will be "more fanaticism, more terrible things" and for Israel the terminal loss of the two-state solution which can guarantee its future.
"I believe in talks deep in my heart but the Israelis want to have their cake and eat it. They don't have the courage to say, 'Let's share Jerusalem'. Together we could be a model. There is enough room for everybody. I'm 74 years old and I don't want to be like Arafat and not see it."
LAP OF LUXURY
* Munib al-Masri has built a home on the outskirts of Nablus that is a replica of La Rotonda, Antonio Palladio's 16th century high Renaissance architectural masterpiece. He has filled it with treasures including:
* The 16th century statue of Hercules in the entrance hall.
* The Kew Gardens-like greenhouse, built for Napoleon III as a present for one of his many mistresses.
* The vast Louis XIV tapestry of a dancing nymph.
* The strangely Goya-like Picasso portrait of a woman.
* The haunting Modigliani drawing of a face in profile.
* The Chinese-style four-poster bed from Brighton Pavilion.
* The priceless chests of cherrywood, tortoiseshell and mother of pearl.
* The ornately carved throne, with its backing and armrests of green silk woven with golden stars, that belonged to Khedive Ismail, the 19th century monarch of Egypt and grandfather of King Farouk, the country's last king.
* The 28ha property also features the remains of a 4th century Byzantine church, complete with perfectly preserved mosaics, which was excavated during the building of the house and is now Masri's own archaeological museum.
- INDEPENDENT
