BEIRUT/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 25 March — Arab leaders will put to the test Israel’s willingness to make peace at their Beirut summit this week, the Saudi initiator of Middle East land-for-peace proposals said yesterday. Arab foreign ministers, meanwhile, streamed into Beirut to prepare for the summit, with all hopes pinned on the groundbreaking Saudi proposal.

Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, speaking to reporters in Beirut, said Riyadh had finished drafting the initiative to be presented to the Wednesday-Thursday summit. Foreign ministers of the 22-member Arab League were to hold a coordination meeting last evening.

All Arab foreign ministers, except Tunisia’s Habib Ben Yahia who has informed Lebanese authorities he would only be arriving today, were expected to participate in the informal meeting. Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, floated the Saudi peace plan last month. He suggested Israel return all Arab territory captured in the 1967 Middle East War in return for normal ties with its Arab neighbors. In remarks published yesterday, the crown prince said he put forward his initiative to test Israel’s readiness for peace.

“We want to live in peace and security, and if they (Israelis) don’t accept (the peace offer), we will have exposed them,” said the crown prince in comments carried by Saudi Arabia’s official SPA news agency.

Prince Saud, meanwhile, told reporters after a meeting with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud that “the initiative has been written for a while and the (crown prince) will submit it to participants of the summit when he comes to Beirut.”

On Saturday, the Lebanese daily As-Safir published a draft of the Saudi deal, but Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher later said a final text of the plan would only be completed at the Arab summit. As-Safir said the initiative provides for “normal peaceful relations” with Israel in return for its pullout from Arab lands captured in 1967.

The draft also calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, finding a “just solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees and encouraging the Israeli public to seize the Arab peace offer.”

Arab League chief Amr Moussa said late Saturday that the Arab summit would not strip the Palestinians of their right to wage armed struggle against Israeli occupation. “The Palestinian resistance will not stop as long as the Israeli occupation endures,” he said.

In Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority and Israelis negotiators haggled yesterday over terms for Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to attend the summit. US envoy Anthony Zinni convened security officials from both sides at 1800 GMT to try to clinch a truce in 18 months of Palestinian-Israeli clashes that would allow Arafat, confined by Israel to the West Bank since December, to go to Beirut.

Despite intensified US-led efforts to close in on an elusive cease-fire, six Palestinians and an Israeli were killed in incidents across the region, from the normally quiet Golan region in the northeast to Gaza in the southwest.

In the bloodiest incident of the day, four suspected Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops as they tried to sneak across the border from Jordan into the Golan region, Israeli military sources said. An army spokesman said the incident occurred near Ein Sarid, close to the Tel Katsir area at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee.

Earlier in the day, an Israeli settler woman was shot dead by gunmen as she was traveling on a bus north of the West Bank town of Ramallah. Later, the Israeli Army set up roadblocks around the area and a soldier at one of them was slightly wounded in an exchange of fire with armed men in a passing car, military sources said.

Palestinian policeman Bassem Abu Shahada was also killed in a heavy exchange of fire with Israeli soldiers in nearby Dir Al-Sudan village as Israeli forces swept the area for Kleinman’s killers. Abu Shahada was taken away by Israeli troops after being seriously wounded, Palestinian officials said. His body was handed back several hours later. And in Gaza, the Israeli Army admitted killing an unarmed young Palestinian man who entered an area the army has declared closed to Palestinians, an army spokeswoman said.