00:00And just mentioning Syria there, as you did, I just wonder what you thought of reports that Israel could normalize ties with Syria and Lebanon.
00:09I mean, is that something you would expect to see perhaps during the months ahead?
00:15It would be a wonderful development, I think.
00:17Lebanon clearly is still a relatively new government.
00:20The degradation of Hezbollah and reduction of its influence allowed the selection of a president after a year of wrangling, allowed the parliament to move forward.
00:30Allowed the Lebanese armed forces to move into that area between the northern border of Israel and the Latani River, the area from which Hezbollah was raining down rockets on Israeli citizens, some 70 or 80,000 of whom were not able to stay in their homes for well over a year.
00:46But let's see how the political situation develops there.
00:50Likewise, in Syria, I've been impressed that the leader who overthrew Bashar al-Assad, who I should acknowledge, was in our detention facility in Iraq during the surge, then, to be sure, was with ISIS, then broke off from them, al-Qaeda, and then broke off from them.
01:07He is saying the right things, and I think we should give him every opportunity to actually implement what it is that he has been saying, which in essence is to say that this should be a government that represents all the peoples of Syria, a country through which, as you know, many of the ethnic and sectarian and tribal fault lines of the Middle East run.
01:28And that there should indeed be majority rule, but also minority rights very clearly guarded.
