The 19th Arab League Summit will be held in Riyadh at the end of the month. On the agenda are such regional issues as Lebanon and Iraq, and peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, which is sure to dominate the summit deliberations.

When Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah first offered his peace proposal, which was made public in 2002 and included full recognition of Israel and normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and all its Arab neighbors in return for the Israeli withdrawal from all lands occupied in the 1967 war, the Israelis were too busy ignoring it. They had another agenda in mind.

Then if we recall, the Israeli war machine was being shepherded by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the acknowledged butcher and war criminal of the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in September 1982. His was not a vision of peace but one of ethnic cleansing and land grabbing. Israel and the surrounding areas were to be free of all people except Jews.

A wall was being built, far more imposing and diabolical than the Berlin Wall, and one whose strategy was to round up the Palestinians in small pockets of desert and fell them down more efficiently. And, in spite of repeated attempts by the United Nations and the International Court of Justice to stop its construction on grounds of illegality, Sharon disregarded them disdainfully.

Through aggressive military maneuvers and documented terror and carnage against the Palestinians, all subtly encouraged by the Bush administration, Sharon would have succeeded were it not for the stroke he suffered leaving him comatose.

His successor, Ehud Olmert, encouraged by continued US support pushed Israel’s brutal policy along those same lines until the incursion into Lebanon last summer — and the subsequent damage the Jewish state’s war machine suffered at the hands of Lebanese resistance including Hezbollah — brought the Israelis to their senses.

Thirty-four days of continued bombings as well as access to the latest military hardware generously supplied by Bush during the invasion did not dent the spirit or crush the Lebanese resistance and proved once and for all that the Israeli war machine was no longer invincible. A knockout blow to the previously undaunted Goliath as the Arab street saw it.

The conflict took the lives of more than 1,000 people and left thousands more maimed. Most were Lebanese civilians who fell under indiscriminate cluster bomb attacks designed to spread terror. Lebanese infrastructure was severely damaged and nearly 975,000 Lebanese and 300,000 Israelis were displaced.

Even after the cease-fire, much of southern Lebanon remained uninhabitable due to unexploded cluster bombs dropped by the Israelis, also illegal under international law. An estimated 200,000 Lebanese remain displaced or refugees today. Although Israel claimed at the time that it was the capture of two of its soldiers during a border scuffle with Hezbollah that started this war, facts have emerged during subsequent hearings that Israel simply wanted an excuse to invade Lebanon, and that plans for such an invasion were prepared months before.

The Palestinians have since formed a new unity government that has been welcomed by all countries in the region with the exception of Israel. And now while Israel’s foreign minister welcomes the Saudi peace plan and has called on Arab and Muslim leaders to establish ties with the Jewish state, she does so without waiting for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And Israeli spokesperson Miri Eisin was quick to define Israel’s position on the unity government: “We will not recognize or deal with this government or with members of this government...”

Is it more of the same? Endless and fruitless twists and turns in Middle East politics, more blood and carnage, and with Israel intent on not giving an inch. Or can they take the lesson of no longer being invincible and try to live peacefully with their neighbors?