What odds would you give for the success of a glitzy, Vegas-style casino, hurriedly constructed in the ultra-tense West Bank, that has been castigated by Islamic extremists and depends for custom on an uninterrupted flow of highrollers from Israel and overseas?
A group of Austrian and Palestinian investors have got $50 million riding on the future of the Oasis, the first casino in Palestinian territory.
The Oasis, a pleasure palace of pink stone and glass that boasts more than 200 slot-machines and three dozen roulette and blackjack tables, opened its doors on Tuesday night to invited guests and last night to the public.
Dozens of Palestinian security guards patrolled the car-park on Tuesday night, fearful, apparently, of an opening-night bombing by Islamic extremists. Airport-style walk-through metal detectors were set up in front of the entrance.
In an effort to mollify critics from the Islamic Hamas movement, who have decried the arrival in the area of the godless pursuit of gambling, ordinary Palestinians have been banned from so much as entering the Oasis. But since many of the casino staff are local Palestinians, that ban is, initially at least, proving hard to enforce.
It's anyone's bet, though, whether hostilities can be checked at the door for good. Mr Leo Wallner, president of Casinos Austria, 15 per cent owners of the Oasis, has been setting out a grandiose vision for the future - with the casino surrounded by golf courses, five-star hotels and a convention centre, to form the region's largest leisure resort. But the immediate portents are far from encouraging. Israel has kept large sections of the West Bank sealed off in recent days, fearing a revenge attack for last week's killing by its troops of two top Hamas activists.
Claudia Schiffer backed out, at the eleventh hour, from a commitment to open the casino on Tuesday. It would take only a single bomb to persuade Israelis and foreign tourists that they too might be safer elsewhere, that Jericho's shimmering gambling Oasis may be something of a mirage.