Bay Area entrepreneur opens shop in Gaza -

Gaza City, Gaza Strip -- Sami Abdel-Shafi's office has a heavy wooden desk, cellular telephone, comfortable furniture and a high-speed Internet connection. But when he flipped the light switch near the door, nothing happened.

"We've had no power since 9 a.m.," he said. "It's a very common situation in Gaza. Let me turn off my laptop so I don't use all my juice."

It's not easy to run a First World business on a Third World infrastructure. But for Abdel-Shafi, 36, it's not just a challenge -- it's the reason he's in Gaza instead of Silicon Valley, where he spent most of his adult life and had a successful academic and professional career.

"I believe -- and I'm seeing it happening -- that you could do good work in such a terrible environment," he said, speaking just before Israel began evacuating Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip after 38 years of occupation.

"Of course, I want to benefit financially. But I want to prove, I want to show, that Gaza does have capable enough people. You could consider it as an experiment in entrepreneurship."

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