This piece started out as a Facebook status, trying to explain the Israeli elections to interested folks-at-a-distance. There is a "you had to be there" quality to really understanding the outcomes of the election - as there usually is;  Israeli politics might seem to be one thing on the outside, but rarely deliver those goods in practice.

 

Given that I've already blogged on that point before (…

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• At least 35 soldiers and some 14 suspected militants were reportedly killed in twin suicide bombings and…

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• At least 28 people were reportedly killed in clashes on Saturday between government troops and opposition forces in Syria as the Red Cross continued efforts to evacuate civilians from the city of Homs; while at least 89 people were reportedly killed nationwide. On Sunday, the ICRC said that…

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• China announced on Friday that it had yet to receive a formal invitation to a meeting of international powers in Tunis next week to discuss the crisis in Syria; the government reportedly blocked a premiere live stream website, Bambuser, that has been used by dissidents to…

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• A new report in the Atlantic this week suggests that a barely perceptible shift occurred in recent months that make the possibility of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear sites more possible, as the benefits outweigh the costs. NBC reported last week…

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• At least 25 people were killed in Syria on Saturdayin clashes between…

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As a professional peacemaker, I tend to look at conflicts from the perspective of the people instead of politics. In the process of mediating thousands of conflicts, large and small, I find that conflict dynamics tend to fall into predictable patterns. This is especially true in family business conflicts. The same themes arise over and over again such that the conflict dynamics are predictable and systematic.

 While reading about the Syrian uprising some months ago, I read a brief…

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• On Wednesday, President Saleh of Yemen signed an agreement to end his 33 year rule in exchange for immunity from prosecution from Saudi Arabia, officially handing over power to his Vice President al-Hadi; a move the UN Security Council welcomed. On Thursday, thousands took to the streets in the…

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• A court in Oman sentenced 55 people to prison on Tuesday for taking part in protests demanding jobs. The accused were found guilty of offences including robbery, unlawful gathering, and vanalising government departments. The protests happened between March and May.
• Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon…

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Hello, hope all is well!

Sorry, several of the This Week in Conflict reports are a little late this week, as I have been without power or Internet since Tuesday, one of the side-effects of living in a conflict zone. As such, stories are only updated until Tuesday evening. I will try to keep to a consistent posting schedule, as much as my access to the Internet allows me.

Peace!

Rebecca

 

This Week in Conflict is now being divided…

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Soliya, a non-profit organization using a custom-made web-conferencing application to facilitate dialogue between students from diverse backgrounds across the globe, is now recruiting skilled volunteers to facilitate its Connect Program for the Fall 2011 semester!…

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In the last week, I found myself stumbling on a variety of articles covering peace programs and conflict resolution efforts in the Middle East and Africa. The majority of the articles focused on organizations driven by democratic values that employed an array of intervention practices in order to cultivate and/or preserve democratization in volatile countries within these regions.



For example, the Carter Center was previously involved in the observation of Palestinian Elections. Acting… Continue