The Middle East economic conference, designed to serve as the annual highlight of Arab-Israel trading in a warm new era of regional peace and co-operation, is heading towards embarrassing failure this year.
The three-day summit, held previously in Jordan, Morocco and Egypt, is being hosted this year by Qatar, and is scheduled to begin on Sunday. The US, which is sending the Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, to the opening, insisted on going ahead with the conference in the face of strong opposition from much of the Arab world.
One after another in recent months, Arab heads of state made plain to the US that there was little prospect of new co-operation projects being agreed upon in the present tense climate of Arab-Israeli relations, and that they preferred not to "reward" Israel by inviting it to such a gathering.
With the US determined to proceed despite these objections, country after country began announcing that it would boycott the event. The early drop-outs were predictable - hardline states such as Syria - but, earlier this week, Saudi Arabia announced that it would not be sending a delegation either. And yesterday, in a move that may well serve as cue for North African nations such as Tunisia and Morocco to follow, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt said he would not be sending official representatives, although his ambassador would attend if invited.
That leaves only the host nation, along with Jordan, Yemen and Kuwait, the country due to host the summit in 1998, as confirmed participants alongside Israel.
Israeli businessmen are publicly acknowledging that nothing concrete is likely to emerge from the summit. "The chances of signing business deals in Doha are virtually nil," said Mr Danny Gillerman, the head of the Israeli Manufacturers' Association.
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, is still trying to decide whether he should head the Israeli delegation, or whether he will be embarrassed by the relatively low levels of representation being despatched by the few Arab countries who are attending.
Such dilemmas underline how dramatically economic relations have been undermined by the disintegration of regional peace efforts in the past year. Last year's conference was held in Cairo a few months after Mr Netanyahu had won the Israeli elections, when Mr Mubarak was still urging fellow Arab leaders to give the new prime minister a period of grace, and was well attended.
In the current atmosphere, Mr Netanyahu did not even consider travelling to Qatar. Instead, he is off to London to meet Ms Albright on her way to Doha on Friday, and then heads to the US to address Jewish leaders. Only if Ms Albright is convinced that he is about to call a settlement time-out or otherwise advance peace efforts, it seems, will a meeting be scheduled for him in Washington with President Clinton.