After Arafat's death in 2004, Mahmoud Abbas took over Fatah and the PLO, as well as the presidency of Palestine. Now 78, and an ideologist and strongman in his turn, he has had to devote most of his time and energy to confronting rivals. In 2006 Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brothers, began its bid for power over Fatah and the PLO. The destruction of Israel still remains their common cause but once again force of arms decides who comes out on top. Hundreds have been killed and injured in a civil war complete with horrific atrocities. Worse may well come soon. Such is the intra-Palestinian hatred that Abbas himself does not dare leave the West Bank to return to his own house in Gaza. The immediate need for a two-state solution is not with Israel but between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. Should Hamas ever succeed in overthrowing Abbas or his successor and taking power on the West Bank, the danger to Israel of the Palestinian cause would reach new heights.

So much political capital has been invested in the two-state solution that anxious officials like to rally support by raising scares. Should the parties not agree to two states, they threaten, Israel will be boycotted by the whole world and eventually go under just as Arafat and Abbas intended to happen. Schanzer makes it unmistakably plain that in present conditions officials concerned with this latest attempt to settle the whole dispute may have a roadmap but there is no road. In a final chapter he outlines 14 proposals for reforms that are indispensable if the Palestinians are ever to have a state. Even in a hard-headed analyst, then, hope triumphs over experience.