to the pathetic minimalism of the second, the path is all too short, as the history of Fatah has shown. The test for Hamas is not whether it can be house-trained to the satisfaction of Western opinion, but whether it can break with this crippling tradition. To do that would require the Palestinian national cause to be put on its proper basis, with the demand that the country and its resources be divided equally, in proportion to two populations that are equal in size -- not 80 per cent to one and 20 per cent to the other, a dispossession of such iniquity that no self-respecting people will ever submit to it in the long run. The only acceptable alternative is that outlined by Virginia Tilley in this issue: a single state for Jews and Palestinians alike, in which the exactions of Zionism are repaired. [7] Lebanon and Syria To the north, the relative independence of Syria's Ba'ath regime, and the institutional stability that allowed it to punch above its weight in the region, have long been irritants to Tel Aviv and Washington. Whatever its history of political opportunism, Damascus, unlike Cairo, has refused to scuttle the Palestinian cause by signing a separate peace with Israel, or to collaborate with the us occupation of Iraq. With the spread of the Iraqi insurgency in the provinces along its border, able to draw on a sympathetic hinterland, neutralization or removal of the younger Assad has moved up the American agenda. [8] Since