JERUSALEM — The Palestinian people may forego their decades-long struggle for an independent state and instead push to become citizens of a single Jewish-Arab nation, the Palestinian prime minister said Thursday in response to an Israeli threat to unilaterally draw boundaries.(Oh No! Allah forbid! If they build that wall, we will no longer be able to bomb them!)

Ahmed Qureia's warning provided a glimpse into the despair that has gripped the Palestinian leadership as an uprising for independence drags into its fourth year with no resolution in sight.

If there is no agreement, "we will go for a one-state solution," Qureia said.

His proposal would threaten the essence of Israel's Jewish identity. Within Israel, pressure has been mounting to divide the two populations. Israelis are keenly aware that a higher Arab birthrate would eventually make Arabs the majority in a single state. Some 3.5 million Palestinians now live in the West Bank and Gaza, and 1.2 million Arabs live inside Israel's 1967 borders. About 5.5 million Jews live in Israel.

On Thursday, Israelis dismissed Qureia's call for a single state. Qureia "is threatening to throw a demographic bomb at us," said Ranaan Gissin, adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "But I assure you, there will never, never be a (single) state." In what Sharon calls his "disengagement plan," the Jewish state would finish a barrier separating Israel from the Palestinian territories, dismantle outlying Jewish settlements and seal chunks of Palestinian territory onto Israel's eastern edge.

Israel says the barrier is meant to protect the country from suicide bombers. But Palestinians fear the boundary will result in a border and land grab from Arabs.

Sharon's ultimatum, delivered in December, gave a new sense of desperation to Palestinians, many of whom fear they've lost the chance to negotiate. Many Palestinians still regard a single state as an undesirable, last-ditch solution. But among some prominent Palestinians, the notion has gained currency as the intifada, or uprising, rages on.

If the Israeli occupation hampers the Palestinian Authority from governing its people, some leaders have begun to argue, then the authority should be prepared to dismantle itself and force Israel to take administrative responsibility.

"Israel keeps taking more and more land and moving more and more settlers in," said Palestinian legal adviser Michael Terazi. "It's getting less and less realistic to talk about two states."