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When it comes to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, a lot of solutions have given peace a try. Road maps have driven past, accords have pitched their tents, and multi-country proposals have detailed their ideas. Now, The Face2Face Project would like to give the up-close-and-comic theory a shot.

This photography campaign presents enormous black-and-white portraits of Palestinians and Israelis who hold the same jobs. Musicians, actors, athletes, religious leaders, and children peer directly into the camera, flash toothy smiles, raise eyebrows, grimace, shout, and commit any number of other exaggerated gestures. The shutterbug optimists between the project then enlarged 41 of these images and printed them for display "in unavoidable places." The pictures for the Palestinian territory went up on March 4. The Israeli side gets its copies today. Here's hoping that the face-to-face method provokes smiles and, maybe, a little bit of peace.

Update: On September 21, Yahoo! Picks talked to JR, the undercover photographer behind The Face2Face Project. Check out our brief discussion on Y! Picks Profiles.

Rachel Papo was born in Ohio, but raised in Haifa, Israel. At the age of 18, she entered two years of mandatory service in the Israeli military. After serving her time, she returned to the U.S. for art school, but work on a master's thesis drew her back to the Middle East and the young women currently serving in Israel's Army. She tells us this, but not much else. We're left to draw our own conclusions from her portraits of the teenaged soldiers as they stand at attention, nap, shoulder guns that are half the length of their bodies, and wait. And wait, and wait. We don't know what happened before each photo was taken, or what occurred right after. But the very stillness of the images, and the looks on the girls' faces, fulfills one wish that Papo did express: to capture the "less obvious" side of the Israeli Army.

Since March 2002, Israeli Tal G. has been keeping a public journal from his home in Jerusalem. He takes us to a burger joint that only unlocks its doors to let patrons enter and leave, and he tells of security guards outside the grocery store. He shares an email from his employer that discusses the company policy about weapons at work. Tal's daily writings aren't unbiased -- he clearly states that he's one of the reported 93% of Israelis who support military actions against Palestinians. But it is a candid look at everyday life in Israel and includes many links to Israeli news reports that Americans usually don't see.