to answer your question, I think there will be a series of terrible terrorist activities and retaliation. I think the world will step in, declare a very conditional, very supervised Palestinian state, with pretty good international consensus about what needs to happen for the security of Israel and the conduct of the Palestinians. The thugs in Palestine will be demoted and the rest of the population will understand that this is their best and only hope and there is no alternative, much as they would wish it. There will be U.N. troops at checkpoints under strict standards of behavior and they will not degrade and humiliate the Palestinians, who will essentially have to live under martial law for some time but that is probably the best we can do. I would still like to see some continuity between a seaport and the West Bank in exchange for Gaza but I don't know enough to know how i t could be done. Vast immigration out of the Palestinian refugee camps must go on to all of the Arab and free world and Israel will have to curtail its invitations to millions of new settlers to come on down, under threat of cutoff of U.S. aid.

That is what I predict and it is a far prettier scenario that some of the alternatives. mg