by Taylor Luck 
– National AE –  As Arab
leaders and other decision-makers gather in Amman this week for the
annual Arab Summit, they need more than a consensus. They need a
breakthrough. As crises continue unabated and foreign powers step
up their influence – and interference – in Arab affairs, it is time for
the Arab League to live up to its charter and to set unified policies
for Arab states and defend their interests before they are dictated to
them by foreign powers. Although
often rife with divisions, combined with a flair for the dramatic by
some long-time Arab leaders, previous Arab Summits have resulted in some
breakthrough compromises and set policies followed for years.

After
the losses of the 1967 war, Arab states issued the “three no’s” that
would be the standard in policy towards Israel for nearly three decades:
no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiation with
Israel. The policy even led the Arab League and some states to sever ties with Egypt after Cairo ratified the Camp David Accords. In
subsequent Arab Summits in the 1980s, Arab powers worked on initiatives
and diplomatic efforts to end the civil war in Lebanon and helped lead
to the Taif Agreement which ended the conflict in 1989.

In Beirut
in 2002, Arab League members agreed to the landmark Arab Peace
Initiative, under which all Arab states would recognise and establish
normal relations with Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal from
occupied territories and recognition of an independent Palestinian state
with East Jerusalem as its capital. Even
as it failed to influence outside dynamics shaping the region, the Arab
leaders have presented a united front and provided a message to the
West. In 2003, as the United States invasion of Iraq loomed, Arab
leaders used the summit to object to the Iraq war while calling on
Saddam Hussein to comply with United Nations resolutions and inspectors
in an eleventh hour attempt to avert war. Yet as the Arab leaders
convene in Amman on Wednesday, the key players in the crises crippling
the region are increasingly non-Arab.

Iran
continues funding and arming proxies in Syria and Iraq, flexing its
military might from Iran all the way through Lebanon. Turkey has
reasserted itself as an economic and military power, flooding Arab
markets with Turkish goods and placing Turkish tanks on Syrian and Iraqi
soil.

Russia has emerged as a new player in the region, looking
to influence developments from Syria to Israel/Palestine to the coast of
Libya.

Rather
than acting like business as usual, it is time for Arab leaders to
address increasing interference head-on. And it all starts with Syria.

The
spectre of Bashar Al Assad will loom large as it has for the past four
years. Seemingly on the verge of winning a five-year civil war, bringing
Russian and Iranian influence to the heart of the Levant, Mr Al Assad
is becoming both a player and a pariah.

In
line with an Arab League decision in November 2011, Mr Al Assad was not
invited to attend in Amman. But Arab leaders must nevertheless come to a
firm and final conclusion on Mr Al Assad’s fate. Either it should
support his remaining in power for an interim period – a condition being
forced into reality by Russian and Iranian military support – or stand
strong that he should step down, using the full force of their
diplomatic, political and economic might.

Anything
less than a unified Arab stance on Syria will leave the Arab League
even further behind rapidly changing developments on the ground.

After years of leaving the conflict to
simmer on the back-burner, Arab leaders must finally put their
diplomatic and political efforts to bring stability and unity to Libya.
Despite backing by the UN, the West and several Arab states, the
UN-recognised government of national accord is losing ground, while
Russia is bolstering its military and logistic support of Khalifa
Hafter’s forces. Rather than let Libya become another Syria, Arab states
should act now.

Importantly, Amman will also prove a chance for Arab leaders to reassess their ties with the US and the Palestinian cause.

Instead
of having a final settlement dictated to the Arab world, Arab leaders
have a chance once again to dictate their terms to ­Israel and the West.

If
the two-state solution, and with it the Arab Peace Initiative, is truly
dead as Donald Trump’s US administration and the Israeli government
claim, Arab leaders must propose an alternative.

Arab
leaders should be cautious when the summit turns towards the subject of
terrorism and ISIL. Terrorism should be addressed, but not allowed to
overshadow the economic, political and social causes affecting 360
million people across the region.

Arab leaders should use the
summit as an opportunity to define what does and doesn’t constitute
terrorism, to take away the use of the term as a blanket definition to
further western, Russian or Iranian interests and deny the legitimate
demands of citizens across the Arab world.

After
decades of struggles, the Arab League and the Arab world is no longer
risking divisions; it is risking irrelevance. The former can be solved,
the latter may be permanent. Amman could be one of its last chances to
prevent a loss the region may not recover from.

Taylor Luck is a political analyst and journalist in Amman