Arab leaders "realize the urgency" of tackling long-running regional crises, from war to high unemployment, Jordan's foreign minister said Monday after chairing a meeting of his counterparts from the region. Ayman Safadi said he and his colleagues endorsed more than a dozen policy resolutions, including several on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that are to be adopted Wednesday by heads of state of the 22-member Arab League at their annual gathering. The summit, hosted this year by Jordan, comes at a time when festering crises have "led to an erosion in the level of trust that people have in the regional Arab order, in the Arab League," Safadi told reporters. "So there is a realization of that, of the difficulty." Arab League suspended Syria in 2011, several months after a popular uprising against President Bashar Assad that quickly turned into a brutal civil war. Assad hasn't been invited to a summit since then. Safadi, the foreign minister, said he expects the summit to signal a readiness for change. "I think this summit has confirmed and will confirm ... that Arab leaders, the Arab world, need to work together and realize the urgency of working together" on providing solutions that will offer hope to people, he said. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, overshadowed by the aftermath of the Arab Spring, is high on the agenda at this year's summit. The leaders meet at the Dead Sea, with a view of the Israeli-occupied West Bank on the opposite shore. Jordan's king has an interest in getting the summit to reaffirm traditional positions on the conflict ahead of his White House meeting next month with President Donald Trump. In previous comments, Trump stopped short of endorsing the idea of a two-state solution — a state of Palestine to be established alongside Israel — and said he would move the US Embassy in Israel to occupied Jerusalem. In recent weeks, there were signs that an embassy move is no longer imminent. The Palestinians want to set up a state in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, lands Israel captured in 1967. Jordan has a stake in helping to end the conflict; it has a large Palestinian population. Several of more than a dozen policy resolutions endorsed Monday by the Arab foreign ministers deal with the Palestinian issue, said Safadi. He said the ministers rejected "any unilateral steps that jeopardize the historic and legal status" of Jerusalem, an apparent reference to a possible US Embassy move. "On the Palestinian issue, the resolutions are based on a clear vision toward a peace that leads to the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 67 borders," he said. — AP
