UNITED NATIONS — A two-day Arab League summit in Syria this weekend is expected to fail to resolve its most divisive issue, the political impasse in Lebanon, and will resurrect instead an old Arab-Israeli peace initiative.

The leading Arab League member states — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan — have elected to send low-level representatives to the Damascus summit, which begins Saturday. Lebanon, where politicians allied with Syria have prevented the election of a president for months, may skip the meetings entirely. And the U.N. secretary-general, Ban Kimoon, has also begged off, citing “another engagement” through his spokeswoman, Michele Montas.

Still, the summiteers are expected to renew their commitment to the Arab initiative, which calls on Israel to withdraw from all the territories it gained in the Six-Day War and to agree to the resettlement in its territory of all the Arabs who fled or were chased out of British mandate Palestine in 1948, including millions of those refugees’ descendants. In return, the Saudi-sponsored initiative promises to extend Arab diplomatic recognition of Israel.

Secretary of State Rice will travel to Israel and Jordan on Friday to promote American-led negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and the White House announced yesterday that President Bush will host the Palestinian Arab president, Mahmoud Abbas, in early May. Mr. Bush also is expected to travel to Israel in May for the country’s 60th anniversary celebrations.

The U.N. legal adviser, Nicolas Michel, told the U.N. Security Council yesterday that the world body has received pledges of $60 million for the establishment of an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Among the donors, he told reporters afterward, are several “countries from the region,” though he declined to name them. Syria strongly opposes the tribunal, which is expected to name members of President al-Assad’s inner circle as suspects.

The speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, a Shiite who leads a pro-Syrian political bloc, announced this week that a parliamentary vote to select a new president would be postponed for the 17th time. Lebanon’s presidential palace has been empty since November, and hopes that the political impasse would be resolved before the weekend summit in Damascus were dashed yesterday, when the Arab League’s secretary-general. Amr Moussa, told reporters that he did not expect a breakthrough.

The Lebanese impasse has highlighted a major split between pro-Western and pro-Iranian Arab countries. Although its citizens are not Arabs, Iran’s shadow looms large over the Arab world, whose Sunni-Shiite divide is deepening, as are fissures over an alliance with America and tentative relations with Israel.

As late as yesterday, it appeared doubtful that those divisions could be overcome even to unite around a statement renewing the initiative first adopted by the Arab League in 2002. “Israel, which is supported by the United States, is still unable to show a political will to create peace,” the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, said yesterday, according to Agence France-Presse.

“I don’t think we should just continue to extend our hands while the other side refuses to take this initiative or to respond positively,” Mr. Moussa said.

While Prime Minister Olmert has publicly lauded “positive elements” in the initiative, Israelis put little stock in it. “How can we discuss it if they don’t talk with us?” an Israeli official told The New York Sun yesterday. The official, who requested anonymity, said the Saudis are refusing to negotiate before Israel accepts all the provisions of the initiative.

The reintroduction of the initiative will not be enough to raise Syria’s prestige, Arab diplomats say. With Saudi Arabia sending its Arab League ambassador instead of King Abdullah, and Egypt offering a parliamentary envoy instead of President Mubarak, Mr. Assad “once more shows he is not his father,” a U.N.-based Arab diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, referring to Syria’s late president, Hafez al-Assad.