​The Middle East is not an easy place to do politics, especially not if you are from the West. Let us face it. When the Babylonians invented the wheel and writing, we were still living in long houses fighting all the time. 

We smashed the beautiful Middle eastern cultures as the Hittite and the Homeric. 

So we have a certain lack of understanding, that makes it a bit difficult to really grasp what the Middle East is all about. 

We see them as dark, strange creatures that we still have a lot of respect for, I mean the Bible is filled with Middle East culture as Babylon, Egypt and so on. But the current political drama eludes us. 

This makes us act contrary to our own aims of peace and stability. We are just the idiots from the outside that understands nothing and keep destroying and meddling. 

Except for two major persons that really have understood the Middle East on its own terms. Lawrence of Arabia and me. 

What is it that makes us players on the same level as everybody else in the Middle East.

It is an intimate knowledge, and love for Middle Eastern culture. It is the Oxford tradition of digging in the old cultures, Egypt, the Hittites, the Assyrians, the Arab, the Jewish, and use this knowledge to propose peace projects and solutions to the problems faced in the Middle East. 

You see, the Middle East knows that it has been leading, and is not anymore. As China, that has the same role, they seek a way to find a leading role again. 

But contrary to China, the Middle East is not as aggressive and dominating. When we have criticised the plans of the Muslim Brotherhood for world domination, most great players of the Middle East as Egypt and Saudiarabia have chosen our side. 

So there is a possibility to work and develop the Middle East in a constructive way. As we are doing with Egypt now, and we can do with all the other ancient countries. 

Here is a role to play for Oxford, in fact it is vital that the Oxfordian tradition of learning and understanding is kept alive and has a role to play. Here again is an exiting role for the UK to play. 

G-d bless the will to be right with the Middle East.