My Letter to the New Yorker RE "Thinking Outside the Two-State Box"

RE Thinking Outside the Two-State Box
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/09/israel-palestine-two-state-solution-counterargument.html

Dear Editor,

The one state scenario is what already has been for decades... and tempting albeit short sighted one state  rhetoric (both Israeli & Palestinian) builds the box and the trap that keeps Israel and Palestine in an escalating conflict.

Now is the time for negotiations and negotiations need clear, easy to understand assessments of the situation:

Two fully secular, fully independent and secure sovereign nation states- both FULLY respecting universal basic human rights and the rule of fair and just laws, allow for a transition away from the nefarious bigotry and injustice and intransigence and grandiose delusions that have been galvanizing religious extremism and violence on both sides.

Two states, with Palestinian refugees able to return to original homes and lands in Israel, or resettle in the New Palestine, or move on and away. 

Two states, as a gateway to a future where tourists, teachers, students, workers, family members, friends, artists, poets, filmmakers, researchers, archeologists,(...etc...) will be able to travel back and forth knowing that their home and their garden and their loved ones, who ever and wherever they might be, are safe from destruction.

Two states with every citizen free to find ways to make diplomacy and compassion an every day endowment for everyone's sake.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES

"The occupation is an emergency, not a macro- or trans-historical problem, particularly for the millions of Palestinians living under its oppressive rule. They, especially—but we too—do not have the luxury of waiting to see what the next hundred years of history will bring us, good or bad. On the contrary, we must have the courage to act now, and with urgency, within the existing realities, however difficult, to try to create a working solution to a situation that is both intolerably unjust and regionally (and to some extent even globally) destabilizing."Hussein Ibish & Saliba Sarsar of ATFP...

ATFP provides an independent voice for Palestinian-Americans and their supporters and advances human rights and peace. It categorically and unequivocally condemns all violence against civilians, no matter the cause and who the victims or perpetrators may be.