Peace in the Middle East? NO!

I think I already told you before, that every week on Friday (right before Happy Hour) one nation of the MBA class gives a 30 min presentation on "How to do Business in..."; it is usually a little bit about the country, the political system, major industries, but most importantly about business culture (dress codes, small talk, talk business first or leisure first, etc.)
So far we have had presentations from:
-India
-USA
-Israel

Today the presentation was about Israel...really interesting stuff! Sascha (the guy from Israel) talked very openly about the stuff that is going on there and he encouraged us to ask whatever we wanted to know. So, one guy asked whether he thinks that there will ever be peace between Israel and the other middle eastern countries - Sascha looked at him with a stone-cold face and said "NO, not during my lifetime and not during the lifetime of my kids!" The whole room was filled with silence for a couple of seconds...
WOW what a statement!!! This quite struck me...especially, because Sascha is usually an extremely optimistic guy.


Yesterday I also had dinner with some people from Shell. It was quite interesting, their top man was the Head of Controlling for Shell Worldwide...a really big shot!
I was seated between two Geologists, which made it an interesting evening for me. Of course in the end came the usual recruitment talk:
-what do you want to do after your MBA?
-what do you think about Shell?
-would you consider working for Shell?
-blablabla...networking
I will definitely keep in touch with those guys...Shell is an interesting company and they were really excited about my background in energy.