At the Arab League Summit in Beirut, Lebanon, in March, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia proposed a peaceful end to the Israel-Palestine conflict with an offer of full diplomatic recognition of the Jewish state in return for an Israeli withdrawal from all Arab land occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.

The offer was not entirely new. In 1981 Prince Fahd bin Abdul Aziz, later to be crowned king of Saud