Arab foreign ministers are gathered at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo to try to agree on a draft resolution to deal with the current crisis in the Middle East ahead of this weekend's Arab summit.
But papering over the many different political differences of the 22 Arab states is no easy task.
Many in the Arab world are afraid that inter-Arab disagreement and US pressure to prevent any action against Israel will result in a resolution high on rhetorical flourish but low on concrete measures to punish Israel for what is seen here as unwarranted levels of violence against the Palestinians.
Syria, Yemen and Lebanon have already called for an end to normalisation with the Jewish state, while the Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gadafy, has infuriated the summit's Egyptian hosts by making public and ridiculing the summit's draft communique.
In a programme broadcast on Qatar's Jezira television on Tuesday evening he heaped scorn on its lack of concrete measures to punish Israel for its violence against unarmed Palestinians.
But Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab states that have full diplomatic relations with Israel, are pushing for a more cautious approach.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, has been applying pressure to modify the summit's outcome in talks with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
Wary of the potentially disastrous diplomatic pitfalls of a summit, the Egyptians were initially reluctant to convene a meeting, the first in four years, fearing that it would highlight both their own inability to take tough measures against Israel and the disunity of the Arabs.
As a result, on October 4th President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt announced that a summit would be held in January. However, the spectre of children being fired on by heavily armed Israeli troops led to a hasty about-face.
The Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mr Amr Moussa, said last night the Middle East peace process had been badly damaged and talks were unlikely to resume soon.