CAIRO — Days after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert invited Arab rulers to Jerusalem for peace talks, the offer seems to have sunk without effect into the mire of regional rhetoric.
None of the key Arab leaders had yet given a firm, public answer to Olmert's invitation by Tuesday night. The little that had been said, such as a pointed statement from the Saudi Cabinet, could be described as resentful. Rather than hopeful and curious, the reaction among Arab television pundits and newspaper writers ranged from tepid to cynical.
Arabs complained that Olmert was too politically weak in Israel, where his standing in polls has plunged, to deliver any diplomatic breakthroughs. They even lamented the lack of an Israeli strongman in the mold of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. And they criticized the temerity of the Israeli leader for inviting Arabs to Jerusalem, the holy city whose political fate is one of the great and unresolved issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
But mostly, they behaved as though they were still waiting for Israel to make a move.
"It's a gimmick," Abdel Moneim Said, head of Egypt's Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said of Olmert's Sunday speech. "He's not interested in the promotion of the peace process, but rather in testing the other side."
The Arab world collectively outlined its conditions for peace with Israel at last week's Arab League summit in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The offer: All Arab countries would normalize relations with Israel. In exchange, Israel would have to withdraw from all land seized in the 1967 Middle East War and live peaceably with a Palestinian state that has Arab East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel would also have to accept the return of Palestinian refugees, a condition Olmert firmly rejected again after the summit.
When they endorsed this plan, originally cobbled together five years ago by Saudi Arabia, the Arab leaders made it plain that there was little room to alter their demands. Israel would have to accept the Arab conditions as the framework for negotiation.
Having thrown down the gauntlet, the Arabs may have expected something more, or at least something different, than Olmert's invitation. The Arab League will sponsor a working group to study opening contacts with Israel, but that seemed to be as far as the Arabs were willing to go.
