Let me share with you a vision of hope for the Middle East and the world.
I will never forget Sunday, January 28, 2001. I found myself rubbing shoulders with the president of the Palestinians, Yasser Arafat, and the prime minister of Israel, Shimon Peres.
They had just declared themselves “partners in peace” and Arafat had spoken in English, which he rarely did. Peres shared with me and others his dream for the region, and I think that dream was shared by Arafat.
Twenty-five years have passed, but I have never forgotten the words of the Jewish leader supported by his Palestinian counterpart and how they almost joked about the “extremists” in each other's ranks.
My “rubbing shoulders” meeting took place on the Davos World Economic Forum conference floor after both leaders had addressed a gathering of world leaders from the podium. Peres explained that Israel would provide the technology; the Middle Eastern oil revenues would provide the capital and the Palestinians would provide the labour. And prosperity would follow peace.
But both Arafat and Peres admitted that it would not be easy.
In the six months prior to the 2001 Davos forum, there had been deaths on both sides. Arafat conceded he had extremists in Palestinian ranks and mentioned that years earlier extremists in Israel’s ranks had shot their then prime minister.
It was a high point in Palestinian-Jewish relations which did not lead to the vision becoming a reality. Three years later, Arafat met a controversial death which was never fully explained.
Other forces took control of Israel after Arafat’s death, the Iranian-backed Hamas took control of Gaza and Iran’s Hezbollah would increase its power in Lebanon.
But there, in 2001, as I stood between the Jew and the Palestinian as they shared their joint vision, Iran did not seem a serious threat. In the years that followed, it has always seemed impossible to restore the Arafat-Peres vision.
And yet in 2025 the forces that ultimately destroyed the vision – Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran – have been badly wounded. Earlier this week, just after the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, I declared to my grandson that I didn’t think there would be a third world war and part of that prediction was my memory of that encounter with Peres and Arafat.
The next time anything remotely like the Peres-Arafat vision was during the first Trump administration via the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab nations, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco.
The agreements were motivated, in part, by a perceived shared threat from Iran and a desire to counter its regional influence.
They aimed to unlock new trade and investment opportunities, encouraging economic development and prosperity in the region, but Iran was too strong.
While good will on the ground is very sparse at the moment, the Middle East is returning to a position of having a substantial amount of the world’s capital.
We saw in the war just how effective Israeli technology has become, albeit currently directed at military efforts. There are countless people in the region, particularly Palestinians, who are desperate for a better life.
All the ingredients are there to restore the Arafat-Peres vision for the region, and it can be expanded into Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq, which all have under-utilised labour forces.
At this stage, there are no leaders emerging to help with the process. But what must have stunned the Iranian leadership is the fact that they worked so hard in establishing links with Russia and China only to find that when under attack from Israel and then later bombing from the US, both China and Russia looked the other way.
The Middle East has established itself as a major international transport hub. And with abundant energy they have turned their region into a tourist hub fed by Middle Eastern airlines. There is little doubt that the Middle East will house a large amount of the world’s data because of their access to both gas and nuclear energy.
Returning to something like the Arafat-Peres plan is still a very long shot. But there is now a chance that there will be a Gaza without Hamas and a Lebanon with Hezbollah under control while Egypt, Syria and Jordan need help.
And Israel now realises that had Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria attacked at the same time they could have lost their land.
In addition, we have a US that has shown its power to change the course of world events.
The ingredients are there for the Peres-Arafat vision to be realised, but it remains a hope rather than a likely event.
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