Historic chance for peace recedes

"We are going on with this," says Sheikh Hassan Yousef, the West Bank spokesman for the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, the organization responsible for the Netanya bombing, referring to attacks on Israelis. "We are still under occupation."

Palestinians have succeeded in unifying around the goal of ending Israel's 35-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and for the most part they see no reason to desist from violence until that end is within sight. That is why Palestinian officials insist that there there must be a "political horizon" to cease-fire discussions.

While Zinni's current efforts include more of a political component than missions he undertook several months ago, Palestinian militants clearly are not impressed. Even the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group affiliated with Arafat's own Fatah movement, has engaged in terrorist attacks on Israelis during Zinni's mission, underscoring Israeli assertions that Arafat does not want a cease-fire.

Arafat and his aides appear to have invested more time and effort in furthering the peace initiative put forward by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah.

Experts indicated in advance of this week's summit that the final declaration needed to be principled and vague to have much hope of appealing to dovish Israelis and world opinion in a way that would steer Israel and the Palestinians toward the negotiation table.

But in the event, the declaration's conditions and Arab fractiousness have discouraged the Israelis. Several heads of state declined to attend the meeting – in part because Israel prevented Arafat's travel to Beirut – and some participants demanded a level of detail that erodes the likelihood that the initiative will succeed.

Under the initiative, says Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington and an adviser to Sharon, Israel would have been asked to make "far-reaching and irretrievable concessions in exchange for a sort of promise that the Arab world will live in peace with Israel – and here we see that the Arab world doesn't live in peace with itself."

But the summit wasn't all rancor and discord. In a rare instance of Arab unity, Iraq and Kuwait came to an agreement that could mark the beginning of a rapprochement for the first time since the former invaded the latter in the 1990-1991 Gulf War.

Adding symbolic weight to the agreement, Saudi Arabia's Prince Abdullah, Kuwait's most powerful Arab ally, embraced Iraqi presidential envoy Izzat Ibrahim, which drew thunderous applause from the delegates.

The Arab states rewarded Iraq by stating their "absolute rejection" of an attack against Iraq and warned that such a strike "would be considered a threat to the national security of all Arab states."

A Western diplomat in Beirut said that the "wording was stronger than expected" and clearly indicated the Arab world's opposition to a US effort to depose Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

But one delegation member said he "doubts" that the Iraqi government considers the deal "final and irreversible."

"Iraq is under pressure to moderate its stand" on Kuwait, the delegate says. "But its position could change if the Americans fulfill their threats to remove Saddam Hussein."

• Nicholas Blanford contributed to this report from Beirut, Lebanon.

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