The kill rate is still rising in the Holy Land, and Jews and Arabs are separating themselves even more from each other. Is there any viable option beyond continuing slaughter and separation that modern history suggests won't work? One possible solution is sending in UN troops, but with a strong American peace-making warranty serving both Israel and Palestine. PNS editor Franz Schurmann, emeritus professor at UC-Berkeley, has long written on both West and East Asia.

A small town on the Mediterranean called Acre (Akko in Hebrew), some 10 miles south of the Lebanese border and about the same distance north of Haifa, has the highest ratio of Arabs to Jews (13,000 to 38,000) in all of Israel.

According to a recent story in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Jews and Arabs have lived together in peace and mingled freely there, until the recent troubles began. Now Jews shun the Arabs and many are moving out of town. The Arabs' economy, especially small businesses, is shutting down.

As Palestinian rage intensifies with ever more bloodshed, Israelis, whether of the political left, right or center, are talking about "separation." Egyptian commentator Ibrahim Nafiya, writing in the daily Al-Ahram, warned that the conflict in the Holy Land cannot be resolved by a few leaders making agreements. He described this as a "large-scale social conflict," or a nationalist war between two peoples.

The idea behind the separation concept in the Holy Land is that national homogeneity, rather than diversity, will be more likely to bring peace, prosperity and a sense of security among peoples.

In modern history, separation has taken concrete form through population transfers, forced or voluntary. How has it worked?

The first such effort in modern times occurred in 1922, when Turkey and Greece agreed to a large-scale population transfer. Greeks who had lived for eons in regions on the eastern shores of the Aegean were shipped to Greece, and Turks who had lived in northern Greece for half a millennium were forced to go to Turkey.

Eighty years later the two still regard each other as archenemies. They fought each other over Cyprus around 1974, a conflict which led to yet another population transfer when a partition cut the island in half.

However, the fact that both have been NATO members since its founding in 1950 has limited conflict between them. Hatred is OK but not war.

In 1947 the British suddenly divided India into a Hindu and a Muslim part. In two regions, the Punjab and Bengal, the ensuing population transfer was particularly bloody, with some one or two million people killed. Hindu West Bengal and the renamed Muslim Bangladesh now get passably along with each other, but the unending conflict between India and Pakistan shows that relations between them have not changed much since 1947.

When Nazi armies reached the northern Caucasus, Stalin, fearing that many oppressed peoples there could rise against the Soviet Union, ordered them expelled. Among these were all the Chechens who were shipped to Central Asia. But they came back and now have made Chechnya into Russia's second "Vietnam," the first being Afghanistan in the 1980s.

More recent population transfers occurred during the early 1990s in Bosnia. Serbs, Croats and Muslims who had lived peacefully side by side under Communist rule started fiercely fighting each other. The result is that, with a few exceptions, the three peoples are now physically separated from each other. Are they better off? Not really, except that the killing has ceased.

If population transfers have not resulted in peace and prosperity what about social or national homogeneity? Consider Germany, Italy and Japan. All became nation-states around the same time during the 19th century and all three acquired national homogeneity. But the three soon launched brutal wars of aggression against other countries that led to their massive defeats in World War II.

What if Israelis and Palestinians agreed on a mutual population transfer? Chances such a transfer would be peaceful are nil, and it would not stop the violence festering along Israel-Palestine borders. Nor would a new national homogeneity be likely to make things better since both peoples are increasingly divided between seculars and fundamentalists.

But history does offer some hope. Consider America's World War II enemies. All were occupied militarily by America, and all are now among the most prosperous and stable countries in the world, not least because America launched economic development programs in these occupied countries that by the 1970s paid off with real prosperity.

Although there are important qualitative differences, the history of Lebanon is similar. For thousands of years, Lebanon has been a mosaic of religious and ethnic groups. Between 1975 and 1990 these groups fought a bloody civil war in which nearly 200,000 people were killed. In 1990, a very rich U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, stepped in and arranged a peace enforced by 34,000 Syrian troops. Lebanese dislike the Syrian occupation, but there hasn't been civil war since.

Both Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat believe that the road to peace goes through America. Arafat has called for UN troops to replace the Israeli occupiers and, predictably, Barak has rejected the proposal.

While the UN does do some things on its own, by and large it does nothing to offend the U.S. If UN forces go into the Holy Land, even without a single American soldier, it will be like an American-originated warranty that says both Israelis and Palestinians will be served.