The complaining by Saudi officials over the past months seems to have paid off. The Obama administration is moving to patch up differences between the two countries. A little over a month before the one-day summit between the U.S. President and Saudi King Abdullah, there is optimism....

It was less than 20 years ago, when Hussam Zayade climbed with his friends the old walls of Daraya’s Ottoman era mosque in Syria. “We read the old scriptures on the inner dome, as if we were archaeologists, looking for a discovery,” he recalls. The Goddess of Love, the Roman ruins,...