As McGrath knows, it is not a matter of waving a magic wand. When the Israelis hit back at the Palestinian terrorists, as they have always done in the past, as they will continue to do now, and as the terrorists surely seem to want them to do, they do not and cannot remove the legitimation that the terrorists have with the Palestinian people.

Dismantling the Palestinian terrorist organizations, one of which is controlled directly by Palestinian president Arafat, has to come from the Palestinian authority if it is to be seen as legitimate by the Palestinian people. To date, the Palestinian authority has refused to take action against the terrorists. And that goes a long way to explaining why the Palestinians have yet to achieve their state.

As a student of history, McGrath will surely recall that one of the important ingredients in the achievement of Israel's statehood in 1947-48 was Ben Gurion's dismantling of the terrorist components (Stern Gang, Irgun, etc.) of the Jewish population

the main difference between the Israelis