When thinking about the Middle East and especially the State of Israel, one of the first 3 thoughts is war or terror. This is of course in a sense also true and correct, but I think on the other hand much too much in the center.

I would like to give you an example: The State of Israel was founded in 1948 and had some crucial wars with Egypt which led to a peace treaty signed in 1979, this was a period of nearly 30 years of much unnecessary death of both sides, but in a perspective today (2021), we have already 42 years of peace with Egypt, so the majority of our relationships are not based on war. Some will say, yes but it is a breakable peace and not comparable to for example the border between the Netherlands and Belgium. I can agree with this, but it is all much better and from 1979 we did not have any casualties on both sides from official war actions between the countries.

We will also have a look at why countries like Iraq participated in wars against Israel and launched rockets in the Gulf War (1991), even they do not have a border or any land conflict directly. Why is Iran pointing out "The Zionist devil" as their main enemy in the region, if historically the Persian do not claim the land as their own? And also why is Turkey, under President Erdogan, speaking about the "liberation of Jerusalem", even though the Turkish Empire left in those days Palestine in 1917?

But we have also ongoing questions, which needed to be addressed with our neighbors the Palestinians in the WestBank and the Gaza strip. What are the status and options? Why Israel can open relationships with many new Arab countries this year like Bahrain, Marocco, and the UAE, and the dialogue with the Palestinians is still stuck?

We will make a short historically and geographically intro session into the status with each neighboring country and see what the status and challenges are and after this raised the question again...in the Middle East really the most dangerous reason? Or does it have also other reasons, why we feel this way...