RIYADH: Benedikt Franke, vice-chair and CEO of the Munich Security Conference, painted a picture of optimism at the recent Munich Leaders Meeting in AlUla, Saudi Arabia — a pivotal gathering set against the backdrop of US President Donald Trump’s latest Gaza peace plan.

The session not only addressed urgent questions facing the Middle East and North Africa but was also a watershed moment for the MSC’s evolution from its Euro-Atlantic roots to a platform engaging regional and global partners on their own terms.

The Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 meeting in AlUla unfolded as Trump unveiled his 20-point peace plan, which has divided opinion throughout the Middle East and the world, generating widespread debate. Franke, however, was struck by the response of participants.

“The thing I was most surprised by was the optimism in the room,” Franke told Katie Jensen, host of the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking” following his Saudi visit.

“I think people are fed up with the status quo. They believe that any plan is better than having no plan and that this plan is the best that we’ve seen for a while.

“Everyone knows that it’s not perfect. Everyone knows the devil is in the detail. But I do believe that a lot of people are grateful to President Trump for stopping to admire the problem and putting some pressure on both sides.”

Trump’s proposal seeks to place Gaza under international supervision — sidestepping both Hamas and unilateral Israeli control — and transfers oversight of civilian administration and reconstruction to outside actors.

Unlike previous frameworks, Trump’s approach relies on external authorities rather than trusted regional or UN agencies, raising the stakes for diplomatic risk-taking.

“Frankly Speaking” host Jensen pressed Franke about persistent rumors of rifts between the political and military wings of Hamas, asking whether these fissures posed risks for the plan’s viability. Franke was pragmatic.

“There are disputes on all sides,” he said. “We’ve seen the same within the Israeli government, where one side wasn’t quite as happy with the plan as the other. But I guess that’s just the nature of such a complex attempt to resolve such a complex conflict.”

He cautioned against expecting unity. “If you ask me for my personal opinion or that of the Munich Security Conference, I think we would have preferred for the UN system to be used for this.

“The plan reinvents a lot of things that we’ve already invented many, many decades ago with the Blue Helmets, the Department for Peacekeeping Operations ... But I do understand that both sides didn’t want that. And, so, I think we are now stuck with the second-best option.”

The AlUla summit was not only notable for its substance, but for its symbolism: The first MSC regional meeting in the Kingdom, gathering prominent Saudi officials such as Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, and Minister of Economy and Planning Faisal Al-Ibrahim, alongside a diverse array of international delegates.

“I’m grateful to the Saudi government, the French government, and all these other governments that are getting and keeping involved in this conflict,” said Franke, referencing the Saudi-French push to realize the two-state solution.

“They could turn elsewhere. They could let this hot potato drop, and they are not. So, that actually made me come back from Saudi pretty optimistic.”

That optimism, however, is tempered by deep roots of mistrust and complexity. “This is nothing that will come anytime soon,” he said, referring to the latest Gaza peace process.

“This will be a complicated process. This will be a process in which the Palestinians need to show true leadership and in which the Israelis need to show true leadership.”

Pressed on whether the MSC will now focus more on the Middle East, Franke was unequivocal. “You will see a much stronger focus on conflicts like Gaza, Sudan ... Yemen — we had good sessions on the Red Sea in Yemen. You’ll see a stronger focus on those.”

This includes “more regional themes and participants at the main conference,” he added. The strategic shift comes as the MSC faces criticism from some in the region — and beyond — about the neglect of non-European crises.

Accusations that the conference is too Eurocentric are not uncommon. But Franke insists the MSC’s identity is evolving.

“A quick look at our website, a quick look at the list of events that we’ve done over the past 24 months will clearly show that we’ve been to places like Rio de Janeiro, Joburg, Nairobi, AlUla — we’ve been to Ukraine once,” he said.

“And, so, I don’t think that’s fair, but you’re absolutely right. The Munich Security Conference was founded 60-odd years ago as a transatlantic gathering. We are transatlantic in heart, still, but we’re global by necessity.”

On representation, the MSC has moved forward — but Franke admits progress remains uneven.

“We actually have an entire unit here within the MSC that tries to ensure diversification,” he said. “We have done incredibly well, but we’re nowhere near where we want to be.

“Different from many, if not most other forums, more than half of our speakers and moderators are female. Almost one-third of our speakers and moderators come from the Global South.

“When I started, we used to be a completely white male German outfit. We no longer are. And we actually sometimes feel like a very diverse startup.

“Yes, we do have several employees from the Arab world. We have this Middle East consultation group where the lead is a wonderful lady from Egypt with people who hold several passports.

“Is this enough? No, but I do believe that the fact that for the first time we will have a non-German chair with Jens Stoltenberg joining us ... will make it much easier for us to hire people from across the world.”

The conversation shifted to some of the harsher criticisims leveled by Trump — namely, virtue signalling by Europe on Ukraine while still buying Russian gas, or double standards in the application of climate pledges and international law.

Franke did not equivocate. “This is a two-edged sword. First of all, President Trump is right on that point. And he is certainly right that we have had a tendency and sometimes still do have a tendency to be traveling across the world with a moral sort of plan that we need to persuade people to follow our values and that everyone else’s values are a little more problematic.”

He listed examples. “It’s not just us buying Russian gas via India. It’s also us treating the ICC verdict against (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu differently from the one against Putin. It is us not keeping our climate financing promises. It is us treating the sovereignty of Mauritius differently from the sovereignty of Ukraine. And we need to address that.”

Pressed by Jensen, Franke acknowledged these were mistakes, highlighting US Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech at February’s MSC, in which he called out Europe’s overdependence on US defense. But Franke also noted that change comes slowly.

“There are many silver linings out there ... The Europeans, I think, gave a pretty impressive answer, not in words, but by massively increasing their defense budgets, by massively investing in resilience, and by making some of the structural changes that we’ve pushed ahead of us for so many years and decades. So, stuff is moving in Europe, and it is due to that speech, too.”

The interview’s regional focus sharpened further as Jensen asked about US reliability as a security partner — particularly after the Israeli strike against Hamas negotiators in Doha on Sept. 9, which triggered Trump’s executive order stating that any strike on Qatar would be treated as an attack on America, and Netanyahu’s forced public apology.

Franke called the executive order “an important step. It certainly helps to restore credibility within Qatar. And I do believe it’s part of a broader deal to persuade Hamas, both the political office and the fighters on the ground, to now finally accept that they need to return the hostages, that they need to engage in a mediated solution, and that they can no longer do what they’re doing on the back of the normal Palestinian population.”

Although the executive order could just as easily be revoked with the strike of a pen by a future US administration, Franke said: “Let’s not forget that Qatar houses one of the biggest military bases there is in the region. That in and of itself should be quite a security guarantee.

“I think everyone was surprised that it wasn’t. And the fact that Trump got Prime Minister Netanyahu to apologize to the Qataris, and, actually, not behind closed doors, but for everyone to see, I think that was a hugely important move.”

Turning to the broader international order, Franke was honest about systemic failure. “The UN system, our entire global governance architecture, was built in the late 1940s of the last century to solve the problems of the late 1920s. This system is no longer fit for purpose, and we need to reform it, and we need to ensure that the Global South has a stronger say in that.”

Meanwhile, “the West is no longer resilient, if we ever were. We get caught off balance almost daily by authoritarian governments, authoritarian actors, criminal actors from across the world. And I do believe that we need to get out of this downward spiral of us failing to address these structural deficiencies and not addressing our vulnerabilities and dependencies.”

The discussion switched to modern threats: cyberattacks, artificial intelligence, disinformation campaigns, and the role of big tech in global security.

“We need to ensure that tech companies are regulated in a way that in fact incentivizes them to enable the enormous positive effects of the technology they offer ... There could be great positive effects, too. And that needs to be asserted through clear regulation.”

But Franke signalled another, deeper challenge: ending what he described as “the age of impunity.”

State and non-state actors “who target democratic processes, who target societal cohesion ... must be taken to court, they will pay, they will no longer be able to use the other parts of the global governance system that they are not attacking. There are things that we can do, and we’re not doing enough of those.”