More than at any time since the start in 1991 of the Madrid Peace Conference, there appear to be real prospects for Arab-Israeli peace. Both Palestinian and Israeli sources confirm to the media that the President of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Mahmoud Abbas, also called Abou-Mazen, and Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, are busy negotiating a Statement of Principles for Israeli-Palestinian peace. They intend to have it ready for the autumn (probably November) peace conference announced by U.S. President George W. Bush, whose Secretary of State, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, is actively following those talks, and is scheduled to chair the conference.

If the statement of principles is achieved, and supported by the conference, which will bring together, among others, leading Arab States, including Egypt and Jordan, which already have peace treaties with Israel, and Saudi Arabia, which does not, but which is the author of the historic peace initiative of the Arab League, adopted by its 2002 summit meeting in Beirut, and confirmed several times since then – detailed peace negotiations between Israel and the PLO will have to follow.

Nothing is as yet publicly known about the contents of the proposed statement of principles, but it is believed that it will reflect the Arab League initiative, which offered Israel normalisation of relations with all its members, when Israel has completed the necessary peace treaties with Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. In fact, it is difficult to imagine that peace can actually be achieved with Palestine, without contemporaneous agreements with Syria and Lebanon. Syria has repeatedly called for a resumption of peace negotiations with Israel, and has enormous potential for disrupting any peace deal with Palestine, if it is left out.

As for Israeli-Palestinian peace, its eventual outline has been clear since at least the year 2000 and the beginning of 2001, which is when all negotiations ceased, and all hopes appeared to be ended by the renewed armed insurrection of Palestinians in the occupied territories, and waves of terrorist attacks within Israel, known as the Second Intifadah. A peace treaty will require the ending of the occupation, as well as an equitably negotiated and agreed solution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. They are estimated to have been some 700,000, and their descendants increase this number considerably. The Arab League proposal on this point makes reference to UN Resolution 194, which ordered that they be enabled to return, or else be compensated. By specifying that the solution must be an agreed one, the Arab League signalled its understanding that a return is by now – as a practical matter - impossible, and that the solution will necessarily take the form of congruous compensation for the lands and other properties of the refugees, which have been seized by Israel, and perhaps also for their suffering. Inseparably from compensation, it will also be necessary to ensure that the refugees are refugees no longer, and can settle properly in other countries. Most of them have been integrated in other countries for a long time now, but there is the acute problem, above all, of the 250,000-300,000 in Lebanon. Lebanon has consistently refused to accept them as citizens or even residents with essential rights, and their plight there is at its most acute. Lebanon is, in a sense, a sort of fragile ethno-religious federation, and the fear has always been that the Palestinian refugees, if granted full acceptance, might seriously upset the precarious balance of power between the autochtonous Lebanese groups. Unless Lebanon becomes a religiously and ethnically neutral, normal democracy, other homes will have to be found for its Palestinian refugee population.

Evidently Israel and Palestine will be completely unable to resolve the refugee problem simply as between themselves, which is why achieving peace between them will necessitate vast international mobilisation. This was precisely the thought behind the 1991 Conference in Madrid, which involved the Europeans and the Soviet Union (now Russia), as well as Japan. The powerful and richer regions of the world were expected to conclude that a definitive resolution o the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East was well worth the huge investment that would be necessary to compensate and resettle the Palestinian refugees, as well as to compensate and re-house at the same time the Israeli settlers who are now in the occupied territories. The number of the Israeli settlers has doubled since then, reaching at present around 400,000, but the investment should still be well worthwhile, especially if compared with the on-going huge costs that the continuing conflict is imposing, and the dangers it poses, in terms of serving as a recruiting tool for extremism and terrorism around the globe.

The November conference is not expected to handle and resolve all of the problems by itself, but it can serve as an extremely useful launching pad for a renewed peace effort, which may then be enlarged to the dimensions of the original 1991 Conference.

The prayers and hopes of the peoples of the Middle East are surely with the leaders and diplomats as they continue their intensive preparations.