Not literally. But seven CNAS scholars try to think through the security-related modalities of midwifing a Palestinian state. Over the course of 100 pages. That I have barely started to read.

But to some degree, what’s important is that CNAS devoted any effort to this subject at all. Anything CNAS writes gets gobbled up by the State Department and the Pentagon. This is about the modalities of how to create a Palestinian state. Focusing on the lessons of international peacekeeping missions. Ahead of a potential peace plan from the Obama administration. The only thing about this report Benjamin Netanyahu can possibly like is its appealing blue cover. (Tzipi, on the other hand…)

Frankly, this is brave for CNAS (and I say this without having read the report, which I should read). The easiest thing in the world is to ignore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Putting out an effort to think through an independent Palestinian state, and linking that state to U.S. interests, even though that’s totally boilerplate, is an invitation for attack by the rightward precincts of the Shtetl. Not even David Petraeus is immune. CNAS is doing a mitzvah here, right in time for Israel’s birthday. And to think, Ex likes to assert that he doesn’t want to get into fights over Israel/Palestine (usually right before he blogs about Israel/Palestine)…

Update, 4:07 p.m.: You simply have to read Jim Dobbins’ chapter. It’s basically about structuring an international peacekeeping presence and the depth of its mandate. And here we get into, essentially a population-centric strategy for Palestine.

Public Security. Peaceful political processes cannot take place unless security forces provide the time and space for them to do so. In Somalia, Haiti and Kosovo, the United States arrived to find local security forces incompetent, abusive or non-existent. Building new institutions and reforming existing ones took several years. In the interim, responsibil- ity for public security fell upon the United States and its coalition partners. The U.S. military resisted this mission but to no avail. By 1999, when the United States and its allies deployed into Kosovo, U.S. and NATO military authorities accepted that responsibility for public safety would be the military’s responsibility until international and local police could be mobilized in sufficient numbers.

He doesn’t really tease out the implications here, but they would naturally be about buffering Palestinians from internal extremist elements and the Israeli Defense Forces. This is not something COIN typically contemplates, to say the least. (Though in fairness, he writes, “To facilitate mission success, there should be only limited areas in which the peacekeeping mission would have independent authority and the capacity to direct Palestinian institutions, and these areas should be largely focused on border security,” and I don’t really know how you apply a public-security focus to a border-security mission.)