Palestine-Israel's post.

Article:

Israel, Palestine Should Examine a Possible Combined Future

Published: Saturday, March 1, 2014 at 12:01 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, February 28, 2014 at 8:07 p.m.

Perhaps the most important op-ed column Thomas Friedman has written recently deals with the need for Israel to decide, or even bring up, the question of Israel's character: Should Israel be named the "nation state of the Jewish people?" ["Israel's Plight for State, Autonomy," Feb. 14].

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the Palestinians to accept this principle as the condition for a peaceful settlement made up of two states, one officially Jewish and the other Arab.

This seems to have been what the original Zionist leaders wanted when Israel was founded in 1948.

It is clear historically that the nations that supported the establishment of a state for persecuted European Jews did not mean a state officially named Jewish.

Most Americans today support that historic act. What they do not support is a nation officially named Jewish, any more than they support changing the name of their country to a "nation state for the Christian people."

Our Constitution prohibits the establishment of any religion while guaranteeing the free practice of all religions. This has been the democratic model since the American Revolution against the king and official church model in Europe and is a valid one for the present.

The answer for the Palestinians and the Israelis is to drop the two-state concept and consolidate both territories into one, with everyone having full citizenship in a unified country that accepts all religious practices as well as those of citizens who practice no religion.

Radical as it may seem, such a solution would be both economically and politically advantageous and would strengthen U.S. support in the region.

DAVID L. ADAMS

Lakeland

MLA CITATION: Adams, David "Israel and Palestine Should Examine a Possible Combined Future." The Ledger. David Adams. March 1st, 2o14.  http://www.theledger.com/article/20140301/EDIT02/140229153/-1/RSS?Title=Israel-Palestine-Should-Examine-a-Possible-Combined-Future March 2nd, 2014.

My Reaction:

I find this article a little bit ignorant about some things that are going on between the muslims and the jews. The thing is that Adams is speaking the fact that the education of Palestinians as well as Arabs are not too tolerant when talking about the practice of other religions. Specially when they have so much hate towards religions as Islam or Judaism. To combine these two states they would have to deny the existence of the deeply rooted Muslim intolerance and hatred for other religions. That means to re-educate all the people, change all the books, change the system of education, everything that has been settled the same way as for many years, and this means that it would take a lot of time to accomplish this, and this isn´t the solution for now. Think it as if you and your whole family, including ancestors were raised to hate a family that screws your family always, and the other family is raised the same way, and now the solution is to make both families live above the same root. The results will be madness, there wouldn't be no tolerance, no coexistence between them, they would probably kill each other if things were as crazy as they are in Israel-Palestine. You can't make the families live together when they can't even see each other. The best thing to do is to educate themselves, stop the hate, raise the love and the tolerance, and live in the same neighborhoods without messing with each other, and maybe in a future have a good relation.