The conference was the first to be held by this American Zionist institution in the Arab World, with the aim of assessing developments since the Jordan-Israel peace treaty of 1994.

While HRH Crown Prince Hassan's closing address described the treaty as a 'momentous event... promis[ing] to transform the region", caution was sounded by Marwan Mu'asher, then Jordanian Ambassador to Israel, who predicted that the peace would not be durable in the absence of a satisfactory agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on final status issues. Some Israeli participants took offense at Mu'asher's further comments on the expectations of Palestinian refugees in Jordan to receive compensation from the Israeli government for their expropriated property. Jordanian businessmen tended to be considerably more sanguine about the economic benefits of the peace treaty than their Israeli counterparts, leading Israeli commentators to conclude that the real impact of the conference was to demonstrate how many problems and obstacles remained between the two peoples.