Kuwaiti crown prince Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah (right) and Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil attend the 5th Arab League summit at the Bayan Palace in Kuwait City on Wednesday. Arab leaders fully back a Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, a flashpoint issue which is threatening to derail the peace talks, a final Arab summit statement said. Photo: AFP

Arab leaders fully back a Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, a flashpoint issue which is threatening to derail the US-led peace talks, a final Arab summit statement said Wednesday.

"We express our total rejection of the call to consider Israel as a Jewish state," said the declaration, issued at the end of the two-day meeting in Kuwait City.

The Palestinians recognized Israel at the start of the peace process in the early 1990s, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted they now acknowledge it as the national homeland of the Jewish people, in a move which would effectively torpedo the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees.

The Arab League had already rejected the demand, in a statement issued from its Cairo headquarters earlier this month.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is facing an uphill battle to keep peace talks on track beyond an April 29 deadline, with the negotiations waylaid over several key issues, including the question of recognition.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has made it clear that he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Netanyahu has placed the recognition dispute at the forefront of the talks, describing Arab rejection of the Jewish state as the "root of the conflict."

For the Palestinians, the issue is intimately entwined with the fate of their refugees who were forced out of their homes or fled in 1948 when Israel became a state. They see Netanyahu's demand as a way to sidestep a negotiated solution to the refugee question.

At the same time, Arab leaders on Wednesday called for a political solution to the conflict in Syria, although the Syrian opposition had asked for "sophisticated" arms to tip the balance of power.

"We call for a political solution to the crisis in Syria based on the Geneva I communiqué," calling for a peaceful transition of power, they said in a statement at the end of a two-day summit in Kuwait.

The communiqué was drawn up at an international conference in 2012 in the Swiss city without the the Syrian government or rebels.

The two warring sides met at so-called Geneva II peace talks which UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi broke off on February 15 without setting a date for a resumption of negotiations.

At the summit on Monday, Syria's opposition National Coalition chief Ahmed Jarba repeated calls on the international community to supply rebels with "sophisticated weapons."

"I do not ask you for a declaration of war," said Jarba, urging Arab leaders to put pressure on world powers to fulfill pledges to supply arms.

AFP