Transcript
CARLOS PASCUAL: It's a pleasure to welcome you to this event for the discussion but, frankly, not a pleasure that we have to host this event in a context where, once again, we see another dynamic of increasing tension and conflict building in the Middle East.
In hosting this event, we are doing it on the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War. As all of you know, it was a war that directly involved, Israel, Egypt and Syria, but involved troops, as well, from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Algeria. In effect, in engulfed the entire region in a period of warfare and tension.
It was also a war that resulted from miscalculation and mistrust in communication, perhaps more so from those factors than a purposeful intent. But whatever the rationale was, no one car argue that it had a dramatic and long-lasting consequence for the region.
Today many of those dynamics are at play again. President Ahmadinejad is, very much like Nasser, a populist leader. He has used defiance of the West and Israel as a way to build his popular support in Iran and in the wider region. And those attempts to build popular support have only grown more acute the more destabilized his own domestic situation has been.
The Syrians have been preparing for war, ostensibly because they believe a weak government in Israel will attack them over the summer. On the other side of the border, the Israelis are making their own preparations in response. And in the meantime, on Israel's other border the situation is deteriorating, as we've watched almost daily a state of anarchy and chaos taking over Gaza.
We've all seen today's newspaper, The Washington Post with pictures of Lebanon. And we've seen a weak and paralyzed Lebanese government that, on the one hand, has been battling Al Qaeda-influenced elements in the Palestinian refugee camps in the north and, at the same time, Hezbollah is rebuilding its arsenal and repositioning its forces in the south.
Indeed, what we see is that once again all of these elements of mistrust and miscalculation and miscommunication are at play. And as my colleague Martin Indyk has said, perhaps this time there may even be bad intention. So to understand this state of play and what can be done about it, we've brought together this panel and this discussion today.
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