The summit of Arab leaders is meeting in Beirut. It appears that the Arabs are about to offer Israel the most far reaching peace proposal they have ever proposed.

From Khartoum to Beirut

We still don't have the final version of the peace plan initiated by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and about to be proposed at the summit of Arab League leaders meeting today in Beirut, but its framework is becoming clear. If approved in the general outlines sketched so far, the plan is in essence a far-reaching one, of a type never before proposed on the issue of relations between Israel and the Arab states. For the first time, all the Arab countries, via their common forum, will make a general peace proposal to the State of Israel.
(...)

In the present sensitive political state of Israel's foreign relations, that should not be allowed to happen. If it turns out that the approved plan does not differ in essence from the framework that has been leaked and publicized, the government must declare that it accepts the principles of the plan, and that they are worthy of clarification in negotiations with the forum chosen for the purpose by Arab leaders.
[read more]

----------

However, it appears that Sharon is heading in the opposite direction. Arafat isn't going to the summit because of Sharon's threat to not let him back. (Arafat has always had to ask Israel's permission to move around the West Bank and Gaza as well as to leave the Palestine and return.)

Analysis / The American version of Had Gadya

The public pressure by the administration, to let Arafat go to the summit, didn't budge Sharon. In his conversations this week with senior U.S. officials, Sharon quoted Bush as saying that "those who nurture, harbor, and finance terror are as bad as the terrorists and will go to the way of Osama bin Laden." As far as the Prime Minister's Office is concerned, Arafat fits all three categories.

Sharon's strategy now is to defeat the Palestinians with force, imposing an arrangement on them that leaves large portions of the territories in Israeli hands. Peres and his colleagues now face a difficult challenge in the cabinet, which is dominated by the proponents of the military option.

Shas Chairman Eli Yishai said this week that they should stop wasting their time playing travel agent for Arafat. Yishai, who attends a lot of funerals of terror victims, fears Israeli society will collapse if the terrorism continues at the current levels and next year brings hundreds more victims. He believes that Zinni's failure will lead to a drastic increase in the violence and supports a large-scale military operation that will force the U.S. to intervene, in the hope that it will threaten Arafat with putting him on Washington's list of terrorists. Israel may come in for some criticism, but Arafat will also have to make some tough decisions.
[read more]