Palestine becomes a non-member, observer state in the United Nations by an overwhelming majority of 138 'Yes' votes to nine 'No' votes and 41 abstentions.
Ireland votes for the resolution. Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore says
Ireland has long championed the cause of Palestinian statehood, as well as the vital importance for the entire Middle East region of a comprehensive peace settlement based on two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.
Two states? Peace? Security? Is that possible?
Israeli writer Amos Oz acknowledges it is complex.
It is the only possible solution. There is no other possible solution. And I would say more than that. Down below, the majority of Israeli Jews and the majority of Palestinian Arabs know that at the end of the day there will be two states. Are they happy about it? No, they are not. Will they be dancing in the streets in Israel and in Palestine when the two-state solution is implemented? No, they will not.
We suffer the gods to determine our futures by fixed laws of unhappiness, fear and suffering?
For it was Zeus who set
men on the path to wisdom
when he decreed the fixed
law that suffering
alone shall be their teacher.
The world looks on. Askance.
Votes at the UN. Marches and protests. Purchases and boycotts. Rockets and missiles.
The two states are the front-line of our times.
The world is troubled
with a lack of looking.
Into the future?
I urge my people to follow and revere
neither tyranny nor anarchy,
and to hold fear close, never to cast it out
entirely from the city. For what man
who feels no fear is able to be just?
Two states: the state of fear and the state of justice?
A poet's conundrum. We reach for Fadwa Tuqan.
When the Tree rises up, the branches
shall flourish green and fresh in the sun
the laughter of the Tree shall leaf
beneath the sun
and birds shall return
Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.
The birds shall return.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/1130/breaking2.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/feb/14/amos-oz-interview
Agamemnon: stage play; Aeschylus; line 200 (chorus); translated by Alan Shapiro and Peter Burian; Oxford University Press; Oxford; 2004
Images (Cyprus 1961); poem; George Tardios; The Way to Write; book; John Fairfax and John Moat; St. Martin's Press; New York; 1981
Eumenides: stage play; Aeschylus; line 813; translated by Alan Shapiro and Peter Burian; Oxford University Press; Oxford; 2004
The Deluge and the Tree; poem; Fadwa Tuqan;
http://www.sakakini.org/literature/ftuqan.htm
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