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The Arab Peace Plan − not quite clinically dead

What happened to King Abdullah's peace plan between Arabs and Israelis?

Saudi King Abdullah.
Photo by: Reuters/Saudi Press Agency
At the end of November, the London-based Arab daily, Al-Sharq il-Awsat, reported that Saudi Arabian King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz was clinically dead following complicated back surgery. So far, the report has not been confirmed − and one might hope that it is not, and that the king is recovering − but mention of Abdullah inevitably brings to mind that he was a rare voice of reason in one of the most surprising episodes in the long-drawn-out Arab-Israeli dispute.
   
In March of 2002 at a summit conference of the Arab League in Beirut, Abdullah, as Saudi’s Crown Prince, was representing his ailing father King Fahd. A few days ahead of the summit, on March 20th, Abdullah electrified the assembled Arab foreign ministers by floating a peace plan for Palestine-Israel.

The basics of the plan called for peace with Israel in return for Israel withdrawing from all territories captured in the 1967 war. Yet, there was a significant condition: a "just settlement" of the Palestinian refugee crisis based on UN Resolution 194, the “right of return” or agreed upon compensation. For Palestinian refugees, now perhaps including third or fourth generation descendents that left the region in 1948, Abdullah did not specify whether they would return to Israel, or to the Palestinian state that would be created.

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