Jon Elmer has a piece at IPS about Palestinian women who have spent time in Israeli prisons. Despite the rotten conditions - both because of the total absence of women-specific accommodations as well as the fact that, well, it’s a prison - his interviewee, Khawla al Azraq, used her prison time to educate herself. She describes the experience as follows:

“Like any human community, there are contradictions,” says Al-Azraq. “But there is a common thread in the experience in prison that gives us strength, a common goal, a common purpose. We are joined together in struggle, so our shared experiences only make us stronger.”

Inspiring testament to the strength of the human spirit and criticism of Israeli strategy simultaneously.

on being one of the Palestinian Authority’s only female judges in an interview with IPS. (I heard about this article through IPS’ GenderWire e-newsletter, a great source for news on women globally). She reviews some of the costs and benefits of being a woman in Palestine; on the one hand, gender equality is less a question of rights and more a question of necessity, since Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza face so many challenges simply getting by day to day. On the other hand, since there are limited resources and men are the typical breadwinners, educational and work opportunities for women are restricted.

al Wazir also notes briefly that, since Gaza and the West Bank are currently operating according to different penal codes, the efficacy of the legal system and the future of legal structures in any hypothetical Palestinian state are going to present a challenge.

This interview is an appealing read because, rather than emphasizing assigning blame to any one faction for the issues that Palestinians now face, it highlights some of the challenges that the Israeli presence and the subsequent fallout in Palestian society present now and will present in the future. Any solution - two state, one state, whatever - will have to do more than simply draw boundaries for the Israeli army. Reconstruction will need to take place on numerous levels.

Spencer Ackerman critiques the equation of counterinsurgency with the progressive agenda in Democracy’s Spring 09 issue. His point - that the military should not be a political organization, and that military strategy and a political agenda (whether progressivism, conservativism, or whatever) should be disaggregated in order for the military to do its job is well made. It’s also an appropriate response to the tendency among some political progressives to deify Petraeus and embrace the idea of counterinsurgency. I understand that tendency: counterinsurgency, as it is packaged via the mainstream media, seems like a humanizing way of waging war. It acknowledges that there is more to winning than killing lots of people, emphasizes population security and minimizing casualties, and reflects a relationship-oriented way of thinking about military victory. In short, progressives like it because it sounds progressive.

In celebration of the fact that this way of thinking has reached the military, though, some people tend to forget that not only is counterinasurgency supposedly loyal to no political agenda (although the idea that the military is apolitical sounds kind of like saying that social science scholarship is objective) but that it implies a deep infiltration of the military into all areas of civilian life. Of course militarization is not necessarily at odds with progressivism - one might very well have a progressive military - but I don’t think the progressive utopia envisioned by many American liberals includes a soldier carrying a gun while he engages in neighborhood clean-up.

As Ackerman says, counterinsurgency is not a political platform. But those of us who do choose to adopt a political platform would do well to reflect on what sort of role the military should play in implementing it, and an expansion of the military into non-combat operations might not be progressive.

It may not be as far-fetched an idea as it sounds. FP’s Elizabeth Dickinson discusses tourism potential in Iraq.

Martin Indyk of the Brookings Institution and, formerly, the Clinton administration echoes the widely held sentiments that 1. now is the time to advance a sustainable solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and 2. Barack Obama is the best man for the job. (You can also read this article at Time Magazine if you prefer red graphics to blue).  In order to accomplish this, Indyk suggests the following:

President Obama therefore will need urgently to paint his vision of a comprehensive resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, summoning all leaders of goodwill to the task–perhaps suggesting they convene in Washington to declare their common intent. He will need to announce a series of mechanisms for achieving it, including: resumption of Israeli-Palestinian final-status negotiations, rebuilding of the West Bank and Gaza economies and PA security capabilities, initiation of U.S.-sponsored direct negotiations between Israel and Syria, and operationalizing the Arab League peace initiative. And he should put this into the even larger context of his efforts to end the war in Iraq, engage Iran and construct a new regional security architecture.

These ideas are not silly. However, they sound pretty similar to the missions of the Annapolis conference that President Bush convened in November of 2007, which was remarkable only for its unremarkability. Also, it’s a little curious that Indyk’s vision is framed in a way that suggests that the United States should be the source for the future framework; Obama is the one who needs to announce the mechanisms through which the issue on the table will be resolved. This may be the most efficient method of reaching some kind of an agreement, but it may not be the most well-received. Then again, the need for U.S. leadership is widely acknowledged. President Obama and Secretary Clinton and Special Envoy Mitchell now have the unenviable task of determining what kind of leadership will best meet that need.

Mercifully, Iraq's provincial elections on Saturday were a largely peaceful affair . Voter turnout was less than anticipated. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his party appear to have consolidated their influence, although votes are still being counted. Jennifer Bushaw at FPA's Iraq blog characterizes the elections as a chance to see the impact of Iraq's democratic experiment; the International Crisis Group's Joost Hiltermann cautions against reading too much into one day's proceedings given the depth of Iraq's other issues. Baghdad Bureau's contributors suggest that the dominant influence in decisionmaking was, emphatically, security; hence Maliki's/Dawa's anticipated success. Problems with registering internally displaced Iraqis were one factor in the minimal turnout; we can hope that it won't be one that gives rise to any violent reactions.

The following is the text of an email circulated by Voices for Palestine, an organization started by women in Jordan to raise awareness about the scale of destruction in Gaza. The YouTube clips linked below constitute a moving effort to address the upset of the conflict by outlining the situation in a level-headed and informative manner; the footage therein can be upsetting.

Dear Readers,

We are a group of Arab women from Jordan who have come together in
response to the vicious attacks by Israel on Gaza. Our aim is to
spread awareness across the globe on the atrocities and encourage all
responsible citizens to act in the name of humanity.

…
The YouTube clips address the following:
o       On the Humanitarian Situation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuzxgpnJqV4

o       On Israel's Violations of Humanitarian Law
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxZoiYvNuqw&NR=1

o       On the Media Spin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-8GqHL2J-I&feature=related

o       Our Call to Action
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAonLJHEuak

…

We need your support! Please help us! For more information, please
email at voicesforpalestine@gmail.com

In solidarity,

Voices for Palestine
www.voicesforpalestine.com

… in the wake of the Gaza crisis in an op-ed in the Financial Times. His comment - simply, support Arab peace initiatives, or be prepared for continued regional chaos, echoes Marina Ottaway's advice in this policy brief, “Sharing the Burden“. Her framing is slightly more diplomatic, but the message is the same: the US should not brush off Arab efforts to resolve the crisis, and throwing its weight behind those efforts will enhance its credibility in the region as well as relieve it of the responsibility of conceiving of creative solutions to the conflict. Let's face it: there are only so many ways red lines can be drawn on that aquifer map.

… including “In Gaza, it is possible to work with the PA and avoid Hamas” and “The ‘West Bank first’ strategy of building up the PA is working”.

Obama appoints George Mitchell to be the United States’ envoy to Israel and Palestine. Time magazine has a wonderful profile of him, including quotes; this one is especially good:

“Please remember that it is possible for an American to disagree with you on aid to the Contras and still love God, and still love this country, just as much as you do. Although He is regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.”
‚ Rebuking Col. Oliver North during a 1987 special committee hearing on the Iran-Contra affair

Abraham Foxman of the ADL doesn't think much of Mitchell or his penchant for fairness; Stephen Walt counters his critiques on his blog. Let's not give Foxman too much representative credit, however; in the article linked above, several other prominent voices from within the Jewish community praise Mitchell and take issue with Foxman's laughable - and quite possibly decontextualized - comment about fairness. Let's not forget that Foxman represents a point on a spectrum.