To the editor:

Thank you for printing Trudy Rubin’s thoughtful and informative column on Wednesday. Her perception is correct that the time for the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine situation has run out.

A series of Israeli governments has destroyed the hopes of both Palestinians and Israelis for two viable and secure states living in peace in this region, through ongoing violent military assaults on Palestinian towns and especially through the continuing territorial expansion of Jewish-only settlement enclaves and the apartheid wall that are taking over and isolating the few shrinking remnants of land still available to the Palestinians.

Ms. Rubin is not correct that only the idealists and extremists favor the one-state solution. There are many astute political observers on both sides who see the “One Democratic State” for Israelis and Palestinians with equal rights and dignity for all as the only possible ultimate resolution of this conflict. How can any state in the 21st century limit the rights of full citizenship to only one ethnic or religious group? This is rightly condemned as bigotry and injustice whether in apartheid South Africa, the Jim Crow era in this country or in any society where civil and religious rights are in fact available to some and not others.

Bea Dewing,

Lawrence