The initial speeches by Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah and George Bush, have just ended and everyone is breaking. I honestly fell asleep several times during Mubarak’s speech simply because he droned on about subjects I felt were irrelevant to the regional issues. King Abdullah’s speech was similar to that of last year’s “Year of Opportunity” speech at the WEF in Jordan, however with a greater focus on establishing a Palestinian state. It was a speech revolving almost entirely on Palestine and youth. As for Bush, not many stood up for home and not many people applauded him. Much of what he said are concepts we already agree on but as one of our participants mentioned, it was the poison touch: you agree with most of what he says, you just hate the fact that it’s coming from him. But his idea of establishing a Palestinian state before his term ends was a fairy tale that spun madly in the room and received a few snickers even.