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We have all stopped saying things can’t get any worse. Of course they can. April 9 is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. One of the abiding lessons of the Nazi genocide is that before it happened, few people ever imagined such things were possible. If our imagination failed us before September 1939, or September 2001, it must not do so now:

Imagine Palestinian suicide bombers, sufficiently outraged that Israeli weaponry often bears made-in-America labels, detonating themselves in the malls and cafes of our neighborhoods.

Imagine, 50 years after the Holocaust, a widespread renewal of attacks on Jews and synagogues in Europe and the United States.

Imagine Saddam Hussein, in his last bid to become Salah el-Din, unleashing nuclear or chemical weapons on Tel Aviv or Tarzana. Genocide, even if it is suicidal genocide, is not beyond a man who gassed and slaughtered 100,000 Kurds.

Imagine an all-out war brought on by the intransigence and vanity of one man, Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat — hated by Arab leaders as much as by Israelis. And imagine that after the death and destruction of that war, Israelis and Palestinians having to return to face the same hard negotiating choices they faced before.

"We will not surrender," Ziad Amer, a leader of the Al Aksa Martyr’s Brigade, said in a phone interview with The Los Angeles Times last week. "We will fight until victory or death." The bravado was telling: most revolutionary movements see death as a way toward victory. But in Arafat’s culture of needless sacrifice, death and victory are interchangeable. Arafat would have every last 16-year-old Palestinian blow himself or herself up before risking his own neck by doing the one thing he still has the power to do: act like a political leader.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s strategy, on the other hand, might actually win Israel a short-term victory over death. The arrest of hundreds of suspected terrorists has no doubt already saved lives. But the accepted wisdom is that there are many more terrorists where those came from. Palestinians have nothing to lose while the violence is crippling Israel. If this is a war, an Israeli friend of mine pointed out, why are the young American Jews from around the world not flying in, as they did in 1967 and many did in 1973, to help out any way they can? The answer, of course, is that the Palestinians have moved the front in this war to the places those young American Jews hang out.

Shortly after Sept. 11, the Defense Department called together a group of Hollywood screenwriters and asked them to come up with scenarios for future terror attacks. I don’t know what they dreamed up, but I am sure, reading of the savagery of the Passover Massacre and the Matza restaurant attack in Haifa, they may have felt their imaginations had failed them.

We can imagine a thousand ways things can get worse, but only a few ways they can begin to get better:

1. An international peacekeeping force directed and led by America, whose goal is to enforce a cease-fire so that both sides will restart dialogue. On the plus side, this puts America in a leadership position, where it can be seen as an honest broker by Israel and the Muslim world. The downside is of course, the chance that escalating violence will expose peacekeeping troops to the growing list of victims.

2. A unilateral separation, in which Israel pulls back to defensible borders, dismantling whatever Jewish settlements are necessary, and allowing the Palestinians to organize their state. The goal here is for the two sides to begin negotiating whenever they’re ready. A majority of Israelis — 77 percent, according to a recent poll conducted by the Ma’ariv newspaper — actually support this idea, as do most of Israel’s ex-generals. Those who oppose it, such as Sharon and Shimon Peres, say it is impractical and rewards terrorism. Besides, what fence will be high enough to keep out missiles and mortars?

3. Israel achieves its goals in the current campaign, secures a period of quiet, and returns to negotiations. Who knows? Maybe once Israeli tanks pull out of Palestinian towns, Arafat will emerge from his sealed room and declare victory just as terror-fatigue sets in among his people. Seeing no other way out, both men will agree to restart negotiations. Analysts believe this last option will be a nonstarter without sustained pressure and involvement from high-level administration officials. Others believe the world has already been down that road, and it has led us all to here.

4. A regional war leads to an Israeli invasion that changes the balance of power and the lead actors. This idea, which may or may not include Arafat’s exile or death, seems to be a popular idea with some Israeli diplomats. But when asked, "Then what?" they shrug. In any case, this conflict has become about boys and girls with backpacks, not men with missiles, and it is hard to see how Israel’s military superiority will ever change that.

Israel is in a short-term war in search of a long-term solution. We need to support her in both.