WASHINGTON, March 28 (UPI) -- All eyes will be turned towards Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital Wednesday and Thursday, as the Arab world's leaders gather amid high hopes that a peace deal will result from the summit meeting.
Indeed, summit host King Abdullah will be working hard to convince his fellow Arab leaders to make an offer of peace to Israel, amid equally high hopes that Israel will accept such an offer and reciprocate.
The plan is not new. It was first put forward at the Arab summit held in Beirut in 2002 and became known as the Saudi peace initiative. It offered Israel instant recognition by all 22 members of the Arab League in return for peace and recognition by Israel of a Palestinian state.
But the road to peace in Palestine is obstructed by a number of hurdles blocking the way to a lasting agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. For decades, negotiators have stumbled on three major sticking points, unable to find a way around them.
First: Arab recognition of Israel's right to exist and Israeli recognition of a Palestinian national home behind secure borders.
Second: Palestinian refugees' demand for their "right of return."
Third: Jerusalem's status as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
With some hope and a prayer, the Saudi summit will manage to breach the psychological hurdle faced by the majority of Arabs when it comes to recognizing and accepting the right of a Jewish state to exist peacefully in the Middle East. For many Arabs, it's more of a psychological barrier because, in fact, some Arab countries have engaged Israel in dialogue for some years now.
Negotiations have already been under way between Saudi Arabian officials and high-ranking Israelis, though the Saudis deny this. But according to some Israeli news reports, a meeting did likely take place between Saudi Prince Bandar and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or some other high-ranking Israeli official.
Similar meetings have taken place over the years between Israelis and Jordanians, who signed a peace treaty in 1994. And of course, Israel and Egypt, the first Arab country to have established diplomatic relations with Israel, have maintained open channels.
Additionally, Gulf countries such as Qatar and Bahrain have had commercial contacts with Israel. And on the other side of the Arab world, Morocco has long held unofficial contacts with Israel. And of course, the Palestine Liberation Organization has been holding direct talks with Israel since the early 1990s. So the first hurdle may yet be overcome.
But each hurdle gets a little more difficult. The second hurdle, Palestinian refugees' right of return, will be somewhat harder to negotiate. Palestinians demand that refugees who were forced to flee Palestine at the creation of Israel in 1948, then those who fled in a second wave at the outbreak of the June 1967 war, be allowed to return. That prospect poses a real demographic problem for the state of Israel.
While there is no exact count as to how many Palestinian refugees are still living in "temporary" camps scattered across the Middle East, it is estimated that approximately 2.5 million live in Jordan; 650,000 in and around the West Bank; 850,000 in Gaza; 350,000 in Lebanon; 300,000 in Syria. When one factors in the rest of the Palestinian Diaspora scattered across the rest of the world, there are close to 6 million Palestinian refugees. Israel's population is about 6 million. Assuming that only a fraction of the Palestinians are allowed to enter what is Israel proper today, it would impact heavily on Israel's demographics.
To overcome that problem, Saudi Arabia would need to dispense petro-dollars to convince the refugees that returning to Palestine is not an option. At the same time the Saudi monarch would have to convince the host countries -- mainly Lebanon and Syria -- again through the power of conviction of the dollar (or in this case the Saudi riyal) to accept the Palestinian refugees as permanent residents.
In Lebanon's case this creates a whole new problem given that a sudden influx of some 300,000 Sunni Muslims will upset the country's precarious religious balance.
And last but by no means least is the status of Jerusalem, a city claimed by the Israelis and the Palestinians and by the world's three largest religions: Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
The Palestinians insist that their future state must include East Jerusalem, captured in 1967, as their capital. Israel, of course, is adamant not to relinquish its hold on the entire city. One possible arrangement would be to annex to the city of Jerusalem certain Palestinian suburbs such as Abu Dis, where the Palestinian Authority already has government offices, thus allowing the future Palestinian state to claim that its capital is Jerusalem.
To solve that problem, the Saudi king will need to show he possesses the wisdom of King Solomon.
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