Has Prime Minister Ehud Olmert once again issued a denial? In this case, there is no need for an attorney general's investigation. The prime minister did the right thing and met with a senior Saudi Arabian official on Tuesday two weeks ago in Jordan. But he is only a link in a long and rusty chain of suffocating peace initiatives. A flash of reason, or just another trick? Let's wait and see. One thing is clear: He understands that it is no longer possible to continue with the old games. There is no new Middle East, but the climate has changed, one reason being the twisted war that he conducted. The prime minister can no longer ignore this new climate. So he went.

He did not need any intelligence assessments. Anyone who reads the morning papers knows about the Saudi Arabian initiative of 2002. It erupted during a conversation between then crown prince (now king) Abdullah and Tom Friedman, as reported in The New York Times, received the approval of Arab leaders a few weeks later, and was again adopted by a similar forum this month. Israel did not even consider or reject it. It ignored the initiative and leaked explanations that there was nothing to talk about in an initiative that includes the right of return for the Palestinians and the division of Jerusalem. It was the usual line: our perpetual demand that the Arabs not come with preconditions, which is in itself a precondition, on top of our other conditions.

But this technique of giving every new idea a donkey's burial is not the root of the matter. At the heart of the defective conduct of the negotiations - which is outrageous from a national point of view - lies the refusal to withdraw approximately to the Green Line. There is no sufficient evidence that prime ministers Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu would, in fact, have withdrawn from almost all of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, as discussed at Camp David 2 and the Wye Plantation talks. We always laid the blame on Yasser Arafat or Hafez Assad. Barak then outdid himself when this war hero and analytical man reconstructed and bequeathed the statement that there is nobody to talk to.

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Well, now there presumably is someone. There is Europe and the United States, whose leader has finally begun to understand that he must get moving with a new initiative before the end of his dwindling term. There are all the Arab leaders, with the exception of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who have promised to recognize Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal. There is the Palestinian Authority chairman, the former temporary hope of a government that had managed to get rid of the manipulative Arafat. There is also the possibility of enlisting a majority in favor of an agreement in stages, whose horizon includes the removal of most of the settlements and a withdrawal according to UN Security Council Resolution 242. A majority of Israelis do not recall that the government of then prime minister Levi Eshkol first approved this almost 40 years ago.

The possibility exists, and was even evident in surveys up until a few months ago - on condition that the public get the clear impression that the government will act accordingly, and with determination.

But together with Olmert's nighttime adventure in Jordan, the master juggler also pulled out the cliched declaration that the Golan is ours forever. His information leakers poured cold water on the Arab initiative that once - not so long ago - was considered an impossible dream. All the opponents of a peace agreement are clutching at Haniyeh's opposition to a unity government with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, because such a government is conditional on Hamas recognition of Israel. Indeed, this is also at the heart of the destructive Israeli process: that automatic opposition to holding talks with any Arab nation that - just like us - presents extreme starting positions. A proposal such as that raised by Professor (and former ambassador) Itamar Rabinovich, to clarify in quiet contacts what lies behind the Syrian declarations, does not suit the Israeli reflex of saying no.

And we still have not mentioned, in this murky equation of unknowns, the prime minister's internal political considerations. In his shaky situation, is he crazy to begin a dance of death with the right (and part of the center, in his own party as well) to the tune of withdrawals? Don't hold your breath. Olmert says that he held no meeting that "ought to cause a sensation." Take his word for it.