This capital city's patient inhabitants will be the most bitterly disappointed citizens of the Arab world if the summit here fails to achieve a modicum of Arab unity and solidarity.
Jordanians complain non-stop about the transformation of the summit site into a no-go area for people without the coveted white, red, green and yellow badges. The summit is an island tightly encircled by roadblocks and traffic is ruthlessly routed into detours.
Yesterday kings, presidents and prime ministers spoke at the Meridien hotel.
The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, also addressed the summit. While saying that the world had every right to castigate Israel for its "excessively harsh response" to the Palestinian intifada, Mr Annan also reminded the Arab leaders that Israel has a right to live within recognised borders.
"There is no solution to be found in violence and no sense in postponing the day when the parties return to the table," he said.
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah were the first to speak, having been architects of the difficult process of reconciling Iraq and Kuwait, Syria and the Palestine Authority.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad held a reconciliation meeting yesterday, ending years of animosity. The meeting, the first official Syrian-Palestinian summit in eight years, lasted 45 minutes and focused on co-ordinating policy towards the new Israeli government, Palestinian officials said.
Mr Assad (35) used his speech to the Arab summit earlier to offer an olive branch to Mr Arafat, who was at odds with his late father Hafez al-Assad for decades.
"Let bygones be bygones. We extend our hands to our Palestinian brothers to say that we stand by them now to serve the Palestinian cause," the Syrian leader said.
Dr As'ad Abdel Rahman, head of the Palestinians' Refugee Department, said reconciliation became possible last summer when Mr Arafat made it "clear that he would not accept less than all of the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem in a final settlement".
The achievement of even minimal progress on the Iraq-Kuwait issue could herald what the Syrian president called "the new era of Arab unity triggered by the intifada". If that is the outcome of the summit, residents of Amman will forgive the traffic jams.
In a speech read to the summit, President Saddam Hussein called on Arab states to mobilise their armed forces to liberate the Palestinian territories.
