ROME (ITALPRESS) – Face to face between two key figures, one from Israel, one from a major Arab country, on what is happening in the Middle East. The Med-Or Foundation organized the event “Middle East one year on,” a face-off between Ebtesam Al-Ktbi, founder and chairman of the Emirates Policy Center UAE, and Davide Meidan, former senior Israeli intelligence officer.
“Today is a very important day, for the first time in Italy an exponent of a major Arab country and an exponent of Israel decide to discuss openly the post-October 7,” the words of Med-Or Foundation President Marco Minniti, “this is not something taken for granted, your presence here is a great honor.”
Ebtesam Al-Ktbi, explained, “I belong to the school of realists: there is a difference between wishful thinking and what we see on the ground, after killing 41,000 Palestinians what could be the arrangements with Israel? There will be a continuous war in Gaza to find all the hostages but what if they are all dead? What could happen? Until the hostages are reached how many dead will we see among the Palestinians? It is true Hamas started but now there is a lack of strategic leadership, there has been no retaliation like Netanyau did and in Israel you have lost the narrative of victimization. Hamas is an ideology, you can clean up with people but not with ideology and even in Lebanon there is not an easy situation.”
More optimistic is the outlook of David Meidan: “We are facing some very hard days in Israel but I am an optimistic person, sometimes among the darkness a beam of light peeks out, light that must be the ultimate goal. We must come to an agreement as soon as possible to release the hostages and at the same time agree on a ceasefire. Control of Gaza must return to the Palestinians and it is not easy, the Palestinian authorities should worry about the civilian population instead of worrying about building the tunnels. As for Lebanon what we are seeing now is that Hezbollah is in a
difficult situation and there are opportunities to change the country-Lebanon should return to the leadership of Lebanon not the land of Hezbollah, I am quite optimistic about that.”
For Meidan, “nothing is simple in the Middle East, the images coming from Gaza don’t please anyone but we have to remember what happened on October 7. What choice did we have at that time? We had to do something and this is the price, after what Hamas did on October 7 we had no choice. Now we have to think about the future of the generations to come, we have to think about reaching an agreement and then building something bigger, we have to live with the Palestinians and share the land, I know there is a wave of hatred in Gaza but we also have to think about the ultimate goal: peace and normalcy between the nations, we have to end this.”
– Photo Ipa Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
