If there is one iron law that has shaped the history of Arab-Israeli relations, it's the law of unintended consequences. For instance, Israel is still wrestling with all the unintended consequences of its victory in 1967. Today, Israel is building a fence and walls around the West Bank to deter suicide bombers. But, having looked at this wall extensively from both sides, I am ready to make a prediction: It will be the mother of all unintended consequences.

Rather than create the outlines of a two-state solution, this wall will kill that idea for Palestinians, and drive them, over time, to demand instead a one-state solution — where they and the Jews would have equal rights in one state. And since by 2010 there will be more Palestinian Arabs than Jews living in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza combined, this transformation of the Palestinian cause will be very problematic for Israel. If American Jews think it's hard to defend Israel today on college campuses, imagine what it will be like when their kids have to argue against the principle of one man, one vote.

Why is this happening? First, because the fence is not being built on the 1967 border. It is being built on Palestinian land across the border, inside the West Bank. And since the fence is really a strip — up to 100 yards wide — of razor wire, trenches, sensors and cameras, more slices of Palestinian land are being confiscated to build it and farmers are being separated from their fields.

"If the Israelis want to build the wall on the 1967 Green Line — no problem, they could build it 100 meters high," said Nidal Jaloud, spokesman for the West Bank Palestinian border town of Qalqilya, where Israel put a 24-foot-high wall after five suicide bombers came out of there. "But it is not being built on the Green Line — it is built on our lands."

More important, Israelis just see a fence from their side. But for the Palestinians, the fence is part of a web of Israeli checkpoints and fences inside the West Bank, and the sealing of all exits but one from many Palestinian villages. This has transformed the West Bank into a series of cages. Qalqilya is surrounded by fences on three sides — to shut it off not only from Israel proper to the west, but also from West Bank Jewish settlements to the north and south. You can get out of Qalqilya only by going through a single Israeli checkpoint, where Palestinians often wait in line for hours. ...

"If Palestinians lose their dream to have an independent state, then the only thing that might guarantee for them a dignified life will be asking for the right to live in one state with the Israelis. When this struggle starts, it will find allies among the one million Palestinian Arabs inside Israel. . . . We will say, `Don't evacuate even a single West Bank settlement. Just give us the vote and let us be part of one community,' " since Israel has made it into one space anyway. "This call will find great resonance within the international community."

The press has become a lot less shy about pointing out the administration's exploitation of 9/11, partly because that exploitation has become so crushingly obvious. As The Washington Post pointed out yesterday, in the past six weeks President Bush has invoked 9/11 not just to defend Iraq policy and argue for oil drilling in the Arctic, but in response to questions about tax cuts, unemployment, budget deficits and even campaign finance. Meanwhile, the crudity of the administration's recent propaganda efforts, from dressing the president up in a flight suit to orchestrating the ludicrously glamorized TV movie about Mr. Bush on 9/11, have set even supporters' teeth on edge.

And some stunts no longer seem feasible. Maybe it was the pressure of other commitments that kept Mr. Bush from visiting New York yesterday; but one suspects that his aides no longer think of the Big Apple as a politically safe place to visit.

Yet it's almost certainly wrong to think that the political exploitation of 9/11 and, more broadly, the administration's campaign to label critics as unpatriotic are past their peak. It may be harder for the administration to wrap itself in the flag, but it has more incentive to do so now than ever before. Where once the administration was motivated by greed, now it's driven by fear.

In the first months after 9/11, the administration's ruthless exploitation of the atrocity was a choice, not a necessity. The natural instinct of the nation to rally around its leader in times of crisis had pushed Mr. Bush into the polling stratosphere, and his re-election seemed secure. He could have governed as the uniter he claimed to be, and would probably still be wildly popular.

But Mr. Bush's advisers were greedy; they saw 9/11 as an opportunity to get everything they wanted, from another round of tax cuts, to a major weakening of the Clean Air Act, to an invasion of Iraq. And so they wrapped as much as they could in the flag.

Now it has all gone wrong. The deficit is about to go above half a trillion dollars, the economy is still losing jobs, the triumph in Iraq has turned to dust and ashes, and Mr. Bush's poll numbers are at or below their pre-9/11 levels.

Nor can the members of this administration simply lose like gentlemen. For one thing, that's not how they operate. Furthermore, everything suggests that there are major scandals - involving energy policy, environmental policy, Iraq contracts and cooked intelligence - that would burst into the light of day if the current management lost its grip on power. So these people must win, at any cost.

The result, clearly, will be an ugly, bitter campaign - probably the nastiest of modern American history. Four months ago it seemed that the 2004 campaign would be all slow-mo films of Mr. Bush in his flight suit. But at this point, it's likely to be pictures of Howard Dean or Wesley Clark that morph into Saddam Hussein. And Donald Rumsfeld has already rolled out the stab-in-the-back argument: if you criticize the administration, you're lending aid and comfort to the enemy.

This political ugliness will take its toll on policy, too. The administration's infallibility complex - its inability to admit ever making a mistake - will get even worse. And I disagree with those who think the administration can claim infallibility even while practicing policy flexibility: on major issues, such as taxes or Iraq, any sensible policy would too obviously be an implicit admission that previous policies had failed.

In other words, if you thought the last two years were bad, just wait: it's about to get worse. A lot worse.

In late August, the number of US troops killed since May 1 reached 138, the same number that had died between the attack begun March 20 and Bush's triumphant declaration that the war was over. This was a depressing statistic (and it of course rises every couple days), but the Washington Post reported an equally depressing one September 6. Two years after 9-11, 69% of Americans surveyed said they believed that it was at least likely that Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

I shouldn't be surprised. National Geographic reports that 85% of young Americans (18-24) cannot identify Iraq, Afghanistan or Israel on an unmarked map. 56% cannot find the Indian subcontinent, dangling there so conspicuously into none other than the Indian Ocean. Only 19% can name four countries that acknowledge having nuclear weapons. Fortunately, a whopping 70% can identify the Pacific Ocean, but that's probably just because it's the biggest thing on the planet. These numbers are not just embarrassing but dangerous, because in such a sea of ignorance swim Bush's neocons, buoyed by it, empowered by it to send U.S. troops to their deaths in a war to conquer and occupy a nation thathad nothing to do with 9-11. Repeat: nothing to do with 9-11. Repeat: nothing to do with 9-11. Repeat: nothing to do with 9-11. Repeat: nothing to do with 9-11.

But the only way to maintain adequate domestic support for the ongoing war in Iraq is to promote that fiction, which means to deliberately and cynically exploit ignorance.

Yesterday marked two years since September 11, 2001, when thousands of Americans died at the hands of international terrorists. Yesterday should have been a day of mourning. Yesterday should have been a politics-free day. Yesterday should have been a day for reflection, a day for thought, a day for emotions — not a day for politics.

But President Bush saw an opportunity, and President Bush is not one to pass up an opportunity. In a speech on September 10 to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, Bush went on the offensive — knowing that what he said in his speech would hit newspapers on September 11.

President Bush told a crowd of future FBI special agents and marines from the nearby Marine base at Quantico that it was time to shred the Constitution even further. He said that "unreasonable obstacles" prevent him from pursuing terror suspects. The "unreasonable obstacle" Mr. Bush is talking about is, in fact, the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. I'm sure the Founding Fathers of this nation would be thrilled to hear a president call their beautiful Constitution an "unreasonable obstacle".

The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution — part of the Bill of Rights — reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It says "no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause". The United States, for hundreds of years, has taken this to mean that the government must apply to the judiciary for a warrant in order to search premises and in order to obtain documents. For hundreds of years the FBI, local police, district attorneys and other law enforcement officials have had to go to judges and ask for warrants in order to search people.

The application for warrants is a fundamental pillar of freedom, a fundamental pillar of liberty, a fundamental pillar of America. In police states the government does not have to ask judges for permission to search places, or to seize persons or things. In police states the police can search anything they want for any reason. On a whim.

Apparently the Vice-President of the United States can't help lying to and deceiving the people he was elected to serve.