The offer of peace with Israel, known as The Arab Peace Initiative, which the Arab League earlier this year said it would withdraw if the Jewish state did not show a renewed interest in negotiations, was in essence the brainchild of then Prince Abdullah, now king of Saudi Arabia.

"The lack of a positive response from Israel to Saudi Arabia's Middle East peace initiative is likely to lead to Arab states re-evaluating their positions," Saudi's Prince Saud al-Faisal said, in Buenos Aires at a meeting between Arab and Latin American foreign ministers. His words have cautioned Israel that they cannot continue to disregard the Arab world's proposals indefinitely.

But just this week Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that no new negotiations with Hamas were being conducted.

"No direct, no indirect, nor any agreement between Israel and the Hamas," he asserted.

"I said a few days ago in the explicit manner – that Israel will not tolerate the continuation of the Qassam rockets shooting," the prime minister said, alluding to his government's continued stance that peace talks would not happen until all "terrorist" activity ceased.

On the Lebanon front the Arab League's failure to help settle the dispute over the election of a new president has left many analysts questioning the usefulness of the organization. After months of efforts in Beirut little has been accomplished except "to show the failure of our regional body to get anything done," one Middle East specialist told the Middle East Times.

"At the same time," added Muhammad Qadry Said of the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, "people must understand that it is difficult for anyone, including the Arab League, to go into Lebanon and solve their political problems that have been ongoing for much of the past 25 years."

In Said's opinion, the Arab League would be better off concentrating on trying to achieve peace with Israel.

"Israel is the main issue that Arabs should deal with first. Lebanon's problems will be sorted out in time, but like Egypt and Jordan have already done, an agreement with Israel is necessary to achieve balance in the region," he said.

Lebanon failed to elect a new president for the 16th time on Monday, making the Arab League's impotence even more noticeable. However, Secretary General Amr Moussa has said he hopes the planned summit later this month in Syria will help push the organization in the right direction. This may be wishful thinking given that the Saudi-Syrian divide is raising doubts as to whether the summit will even take place.

''The ministers called for putting the Syrian-Lebanese relations on the right track,'' said Moussa at a press conference in Cairo. He added, "There is an Arab consensus that there should be a Lebanese president, this will ease everything."

Despite his popularity and influence, Moussa has yet to receive confirmation from leading nations, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for their participation in the Damascus conference. Cairo and Riyadh have threatened to boycott the summit in protest at Syria's perceived meddling in Lebanese politics.

"It is frustrating, yes, that our two leading members of the Arab League feel so strongly about another country to not attend a summit that is being engineered to help solve many of our differences," a Moussa aid, who was not officially allowed to talk with the media, told the Middle East Times.

The official said that the Arab League has two major goals to achieve at the Damascus conference: "First, we hope that we can achieve major headway in the Lebanon crisis. This needs to be done, and as soon as possible, so we can concentrate on other important issues at hand; and second, setting the ground for real and substantive peace discussions with Israel."

Foreign observers also feel that while the Arab League has not been able to achieve any lasting success in the region, the fact that it continues to maintain pressure on its members reveals that it is moving forward and not dwelling in the past.

"So often we have seen Arab nations talk about past atrocities or past mistakes that it is hard to discern whether there is a real, viable plan for the future well-being of this region," one analyst said. "Now we have an organization, that despite the current trend of failure, is showing the world that there is a desire to make things better for future generations."

The question remains, however: can the Arab League prove effective at the end of the day?