Ryan Rodrick Beiler

IN "SILENCE FOR GAZA,” Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish captures the contradictions of the coastal enclave, describing it alternately as “ugly, impoverished, miserable,” and “the most beautiful, the purest and richest among us.” Darwish’s antonyms evoke Gaza’s crushing conditions and resilient residents, exemplars of sumud, an Arabic word roughly translated as “steadfast perseverance”—a fundamental form of Palestinian resistance. Darwish’s poem also states that Gaza “did not believe that it was material for media. It did not prepare for cameras and did not put smiling paste on its face.” And yet every person, every story, every image of Gaza illustrates this persistent paradox of a land at once ugly and beautiful.

“I DON’T KNOW why they targeted us. No rockets were fired from our neighborhood,” says citrus farmer Yusuf Jilal Arafat, whose 5-year-old daughter Runan was killed when Israeli warplanes bombed their home. Arafat’s wife, four months pregnant, and their 8-year-old son were found alive in the rubble. His surviving children now suffer from frequent panic attacks at night. Many of Arafat’s trees were destroyed by the bombs, and the ground is covered with oranges now in various stages of decay. Rumors of contamination by Israeli weapons may hurt the sales of his crop, but he will still harvest. The family is living with Arafat’s father-in-law until they can rebuild.

Rebuilding under Israeli import restrictions is no simple task, so salvaging existing materials remains a vital practice—albeit risky, according to structural engineers. But ingenuity-by-necessity is constantly on display in Gaza, whether it’s recovering crushed stone from beneath ruined highways, straightening steel rebar from bombed-out buildings, or pulverizing concrete for reuse in new (but weaker) blocks.

The scenes were stunning: Hundreds of demonstrators pouring across the fence between Syria and the Israeli occupied Golan Heights.

Even before last fall's reboot of the peace process, Israeli and Palestinian headlines recycled variations on the theme, "What will happen when the talks fail?" Official spokespersons dutifully countered with optimistic clichés. But as the process drags along, on-the-ground skepticism remains.

West Bank Christian Daher Nasser expresses a widespread grassroots opinion: Governments don’t make peace, people do. Though surrounding Israeli settlements threaten to confiscate his family's land, he has invited Orthodox Jews from those same settlements for tea and sponsored soccer games between Palestinian and Israeli children. A stone at the farm’s entrance bears the painted slogan, "We refuse to be enemies," even though Israelis have bulldozed hundreds of his olive trees. His response? Plant hundreds more.

But can isolated acts of nonviolence create lasting peace? After an East Jerusalem screening of the documentary film Budrus, one of the producers, Rula Salameh, acknowledged that localized successes of Palestinian nonviolence have yet to coalesce into a comprehensive, disciplined movement. Though demonstrations have been successful at altering the path of the Israeli "separation barrier," sometimes organizers cannot prevent youths from throwing stones. Salameh and others confirm that many older Palestinians who've "paid the price" for participating in past violence admit that such methods harmed all sides, and that nonviolence is a better way.

Stephen Colbert does the second best interview in recent memory with economist, passionate advocate for consumer protection, and veteran Sunday school teacher Elizabeth Warren. Second best, that is, to Sojourners' interview with her for our April magazine cover story.

If I were ExxonMobil or Halliburton, I’d be watching a certain congressional race with great interest. According to the Supreme Court ruling early this year in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, corporations have the same rights as human beings in regard to campaign financing. So now a Maryland PR firm is breaking more new ground by making a bid to be the first corporation to run for U.S. Congress: Murray Hill Inc. has announced it will try to compete in this fall’s Republican primary for Maryland’s 8th Congressional District.

Although the firm often works for progressive causes such as labor unions, conservatives may just have to vote for it for the sake of precedent. After all, if, as many conservatives claim, private business is better than government at pretty much everything, why not elect a corporation to be in government?

Murray Hill’s promise to “eliminate the middleman” offers immediate gains in electoral efficiency. Instead of dumping piles of money into the campaign coffers of a fickle human who may only represent some of their interests, now a corporation can buy democracy direct at huge discounts. And they pass the savings on to you! (You’re a stockholder, right?)

No longer will corporations need to bankroll overpaid lobbyists to draft legislation that underpaid congressional staffers—or, gasp, grassroots activists—might monkey with. When corporations take office, lobbyists are the staffers—instead of having to wait a few years to change jobs like they do now.

A little satire to lighten a week of heavy news on the immigration reform front:

Last week, The Washington Post's On Faith site devoted their weekly Q&A to the debate over social justice which they titled, "Wallis vs.

Several sources have recommended this commentary by M.J. Rosenberg at Media Matters as a helpful analysis of the new "Obama Peace Plan" for the Middle East.