"He says it to the international community, but not to his own people." In short, "It's not serious."
One proven method is to concentrate on one word and argue that it shows the dishonesty of the whole offer. For example, before the October 1973 war, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt made a far-reaching peace offer. Golda Meir rejected it out of hand. Her Arabists (there are always intellectual whores around to do the dirty job) discovered that Sadat spoke of "salaam" but not of "sulh," which "proves" that he does not mean real peace. More than 2,000 Israel soldiers and tens of thousands of Egyptians paid with their lives for this word. After that, a salaam treaty was signed.
Such methods are already being applied now to the Saudi offer. First it was said that Crown Prince Abdullah had spoken about his initiative only with an American journalist, but not addressed his own people.54 When it transpired that it was widely published in all Saudi papers, both at home and in London, another argument was put forward: the prince has made his offer only because Saudis had become unpopular in the United States after the Twin Towers outrage. (As if this matters.) In short, Abdullah has not become a real Zionist.
This point was widely discussed in the Israeli media. Commentators commented, scholars showed their scholarly prowess. But not one (not one!) of them discussed the actual content of the offer.
PHASE B is designed to outsmart the offer. We do not reject the offer. Of course not! We're longing for peace! So we welcome the "positive trend" of the offer and kick the ball out of the field.
The best method is to ask for a meeting with the Arab leader who proposed the offer, "to clarify the issues." That sounds logical. Americans think that, if two people have a quarrel, they should meet and discuss the matter, in order to end it. What can be more reasonable than that?
But a conflict between nations does not resemble a quarrel between two people. Every Arab peace offer rests on a two-part premise: You give back the occupied territories, and you get recognition and "normalization." Normalization includes, of course, meetings of the leaders. When the Israeli government demands a meeting with Arab leaders "to clarify details," it actually tries to get the reward (normalization) without delivering the goods (withdrawal from the occupied territories). A beautiful trick indeed. If the Arab leaders refuse to meet, well, it only shows that their peace offer is a sham, doesn't it?
Many peace offers have fallen into this trap. Ben-Gurion offered to meet with Muhammad Naguib, the Egyptian ruler after the 1952