 Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to this Middle East Outlook session at the World Policy Conference in Abu Dhabi I'm Terry Martin. I'm a Berlin based broadcast Journalist and some of you may remember me from yesterday when I chaired the Ukraine session Today, I'm jumping in for Stephen Erlinger Stephen Erlinger I understand is a regular at this conference He was originally scheduled to chair this session, but was called back to work So my apologies to any of you who were expecting to see Stephen Erlinger up here There's no way I can fill Steve's big shoes But I assure you I will do my very best to make this panel worth your while I'll introduce our distinguished guests in just a moment, but first I want to say If this Conference had been held one month ago We would be having a very different conversation than the one we're about to have right now the attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7th and Israel's response have shattered the status quo and Put a big question mark over the immediate Future of this region the repercussions of course have been global. It's being felt around the world over the next hour and a half we'll explore What has changed since October 7th so far and what hasn't changed? What's at stake in the coming months and how the conflict might shape the region moving forward now? We're not going to talk exclusively about the conflict, but there's a good chance that 98% of it will will be related to it now Understandably public attention right now is focused very much on the suffer on the profound suffering and risks Inherent in this war, but I will encourage our panel to explore To also reflect on the possibility for exploring a viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict because obviously such a solution Can be regarded as essential to the future of peace and stability in the region Now we do have a great panel on this topic. I'm going to just quickly introduce them now Starting from my left Muhammad Bahroon, I got that right as director and co-founder of the Dubai policy Public Policy Research Center before that he was editor of the Gulf Defense Magazine and worked for multiple media outlets. So a colleague in that sense He played a key role in the United Arab Emirates national identity initiative I understand and he's a founding board member of the of a busola the busola Institute Which is a Brussels based think tank focusing on the ties between the EU and the Gulf Cooperation Council states. So, yeah Nabil Fahmi next to him and I'm sure that Understand that you've been here also time or two yourself Is Dean emeritus at the American University in Cairo where he founded the school of global affairs He's also a career diplomat. He was Egypt's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Also ambassador to the United States and Japan before that He also worked extensively with the United Nations on disarmament and international security Renaud Girard is senior reporter and international columnist at the French Daily Le Figaro He covered global political crises and armed conflicts for 40 years He's a journalist or also a colleague in that sense, but you know Very accomplished much more accomplished than I am. He's written several books on the Middle East and Diplomatic issues. So he's well-versed in these topics Polka Pautas someone I've known for quite a while in Germany when he was head of Stiftung Wissenschaft and Politique that's international in the Institute for international and security affairs SWP some of you may know He is currently under secretary general and head of the strategic review team of the United Nations assistance mission in Iraq He formerly served as special representative of the secretary general For Sudan and head of the UN's transition assistance mission in Sudan He was also UN assistant secretary general and senior advisor to the UN special envoy for Syria And was previously director of the as I mentioned of SWP So we've got someone very with intimate knowledge of a couple of the signatories of the Abraham Accords as well It's a mar Rabbina, which Was supposed to be be joining us. He couldn't travel here. He's going to still try whether we're trying to reach him right now He was planning to visit us remotely. We're hoping that he'll be here He's professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Tel Aviv University And president emeritus and counselor of the Israel Institute with offices in Washington and Tel Aviv Distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution and so on he served as ambassador of Israel to the United States and chief negotiator with Syria in the mid 1990s that that experience would be very valuable to have with us today I'm hoping that we will still be able to contact him Remotely, I'll keep you up to date on that and at the other end of our large stage here We have Dorotesh Schmidt. She is head of the Turkey Middle East program at the French Institute of International Relations e-free which behind this her work has focused on European policies in the Mediterranean and the Middle East on the Dynamics in these regions and on the Arab policy of France She's done extensive work tracking the emergence of Turkey as a global power So thank you to all of our panelists for being with us today It's an amazing group of speakers that I think are going to be able to Give us some real insights on on where we are and where things might be headed We'll start with each of our speakers delivering some opening remarks Remarks will be delivered partly in English mainly in English partly in French So if you need some headphones, please please get them now I will then get the discussion going along the way I plan to integrate some input from from the floor from all of you So during the last third of the of the session We're going to try to I'll be calling on you for questions or if you just raise your hand when we get there