The collapse of the peace process has painfully exposed the fact that the demand for an independent state of Palestine has become utopian. Even if it could be accomplished as a formality, it would in reality be no more than a set of Bantustans, manipulated entirely by the Israeli Defence Forces and the Israeli state. And the problem of how Israel can swallow the Occupied Territories without a fatal attack of indigestion that wrecks Israel at large immediately raises 1948 all over again.