Amman will host the annual Arab leaders’ summit on March 29, 2017.

On the agenda will be myriad of very difficult issues, probably topped by the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since the Arab League was created seven decades ago, this issue has been a regular item on every Arab League meeting agenda, whether at summit level or below.

Similarly, the issue has been a standard UN agenda item since the international organisation was founded, about the same time as the Arab League.

Despite constant intensive efforts by both organisations, and despite the countless conferences and meetings at various levels addressing the century-old conflict, no progress has been achieved.

In fact, the situation has gone from bad to worse, with the conflict that initially started between the Palestinians and the Jews escalating and expanding.

In its early stage, the conflict engulfed the Arab League states, thus becoming an Arab-Israeli conflict.

Despite the commitment by the Arab states, at the termination of the British mandate on Palestine in 1948, to help the powerless Palestinians against the Zionist onslaught, very little was achieved by the Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi armies.

With the exception of the small Jordanian Army that successfully fought and saved the West Bank with East Jerusalem from occupation, the other armies hardly achieved anything in what was a terribly planned Arab League effort.

The Gaza Strip was also spared occupation by the Egyptian forces, and the narrow coastal strip became a major shelter for Palestinian refugees escaping brutal Zionist ethnic cleansing atrocities from dozens of neighbouring ethnic cleansed Arab villages.

The remaining 22 per cent of Palestine that was saved for the Palestinians in the 1948 war — the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — were subsequently lost to the Israelis in the June 1967 war.

In addition, the simultaneous three-pronged Israeli army attack against Syria, Egypt and Jordan resulted in the seizure and occupation of the entire Sinai Peninsula, with the Gaza Strip, all the way to the Suez Canal and the Syrian Golan Heights.

At a later phase, the conflict became regional, with the indirect involvement of Iran and Turkey, and even Pakistan.

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