I wasn't thinking so much in terms of a formal end of the ceasefire with the IRA and the UDA and all going back on a "war footing" overnight as a "rational" policy with some "rational objective".

What I meant is this is a fragile situation with a lot of possibilities of disintegrating very fast into some kind of nightmare, with nobody gaining anything or even thinking they are likely to gain anything. There are a lot of people out there with mental capacity to carry out atrocities and counter-atrocities, and the whole thing could disintegrate horribly rapidly - and that's where the analogy with Israel/Palestine comes in.

(And I'm glad to see you've registered and lost that GUEST prefix, Ireland. At least now if we're disagreeing, I'll know it's you and not someone else trying to stir things up.)