At an emergency summit conference which convenes in Cairo today, the leaders of 22 Arab states will try to forge a concerted Arab strategy on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
With the violence in the occupied territories showing little sign of abating, and with Arab public opinion increasingly aroused on the Palestinians' behalf, the kings and presidents will be under heavy pressure to take serious action.
Failure to do so, to confine themselves to mere verbal outrage against Israel and moral support for the Palestinians, could face some of them with growing, and ultimately dangerous, unrest at home. On the other hand, success, however limited, might worsen the situation on the ground, by fortifying Palestinians' resolve to keep up their new Intifada, and deepening the sense of menace and encirclement, and a consequent readiness to strike back with escalating military force, that is taking hold in Israel.
Nobody in the Arab world expects much from the leaders, for all the talk of eventual war. Some Arab leaders have struck belligerent poses; President Ali Salih of Yemen has said he would be ready to send "thousands of fighters" to join the Palestinians.
In Iraq, where, according to official propaganda, four million people have "volunteered for Palestine", President Saddam Hussein has castigated other Arab leaders who "don't know how to fight," and the press has said the summit should aim for "the complete liberation of Palestine".
But the official summit agenda - which has been leaked by the maverick Col Gadafy - contains no proposals for collective military preparation.
In a reminder to everyone that if there were a war, Egypt, as the strongest Arab military power, would bear the brunt of it, President Mubarak has scoffed at those who "want to fight to the last Egyptian soldier". "War is not a game," he said, "and there is no alternative to the peace process."
The most the Arab public realistically expects of its leaders is diplomatic and economic reprisals against Israel. The more hardline countries, such as Syria and Lebanon, have backed calls, heard throughout the region, for those states that have made formal peace with Israel - Jordan and Egypt - to break diplomatic relations and those that have engaged in a process of "normalisation" with it - Qatar, Tunisia, Morocco, Oman - to close down trade missions and "liaison offices". Two - Morocco and Oman - have already taken steps in that direction.
THERE IS no public indication that Egypt, the US's stoutest Arab ally in the quest for a peaceful settlement, would be ready to break diplomatic relations. However, it is suggested here that it might be ready for an "ultimatum" pledging such action "if Israeli aggression continues". Nor could there be any question, said the foreign minister, Amr Moussa, of non-Arab sovereignty over east Jerusalem and its holy places.
Yet the mere holding of such a conference is something of an achievement. Summits, ordinary or emergency, are supposed to convene at least once a year. But such is the disarray in the Arab world that this is the first of any kind since 1996, and the first plenary one, which all Arab states, including Iraq, will be attending, for more than 10 years.
Although Saddam is not going in person, he will be represented by his top foreign policy executive, the deputy premier, Tariq Aziz. This readiness to close ranks - with Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian leaders sitting side by side with mortal enemies from Iraq - is a measure of the gravity of the situation as Arab leaders see it.
It marks a serious erosion of US influence in the region. The US has always worked behind the scenes to thwart Arab summitry. It sees it as inimical to the peace process; furthermore, Iraqi attendance amounts to another breakthrough in Saddam's quest for international rehabilitation. Saudi Arabia, always the most heedful of US concerns, has clearly distanced itself from such concerns now.
It is also a great achievement for Mr Arafat, and his mobilisation of the Arabs on his behalf. Mahdi Abdul Hadi, a Palestinian academic, said: "We have awakened sleeping horses in the Arab world. Amman is burning, Cairo is burning."
Palestine, and the popular indignation it can arouse, has always been the raison d'etre of Arab summits. But, down the years, these summits have proved so ineffectual that, for much of the Arab public, the rulers' performance over Palestine has become the most obvious common yardstick of their unfitness to rule.
As they gather in Cairo, many of them must be more acutely aware of that than usual, because the last three weeks have witnessed popular indignation of a scale and intensity not seen for many years. In street protests from Oman to Morocco, in newspaper columns and politicians' speeches, the Arab "street" and intelligentsia have not merely inveighed against the twin villains - the US and America - but against the inaction and indifference of Arab regimes.
Some Arab observers argue that the protests taps into a deep reservoir of disgust at the whole existing order, at the corruption and tyranny of regimes, the world's most enduring, which seem amazingly, everlastingly proof against any reckoning or retribution.
The Arab leaders, wrote Salahhudin Hafiz, deputy editor of al-Ahram, Egypt's leading, pro-government newspaper, last week, should be warned that "the outrage at, and rejection of, Israeli aggression which has dominated the Arab street could turn inwards if frustrated and driven to despair - either by continued Israeli arrogance and American pressure, or by the summit's failure to live up to reasonable expectations."
