this weekend at the City of Miami’s emergency operations center, a squat, thick-walled building at Police Headquarters in downtown Miami.

But it told another story. It was near Biscayne Bay and sits on the edge of hundreds of millions of dollars — maybe even billions of dollars — worth of condominiums and office towers. The glamorous buildings, with grand views of the bay and, in some cases, rooftop pools, had not existed when I covered Hurricane Andrew.

On Sunday, I drove around in the storm with officials in a heavy Miami police sport utility vehicle. Two construction cranes had already buckled. Strong gusts began to hammer us after almost an hour in the streets. The gusts might have been as strong as 80 to 100 miles an hour. We couldof existence. Israel vacated the Gaza Strip in 2005. The Palestinians could have built civil institutions. Israel left them beautiful greenhouses. The Palestinians blew them up.

A third option is perpetual war. This involves Israel winning military victories but refusing to finish the job. Palestinians offer truces that they violate.

This leaves the fourth option of ending a war by winning it. President Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Within days, the Japanese surrendered and America had complete and total victory in World War II.

Wars end under one of two conditions: One side concludes that victory is impossible, or both sides reach this conclusion. The Korean War ended in stalemate. World War II ended with checkmate.





Stalemate will not occur because Israel will not unilaterally surrender. They have