Every couple of years since the 1967 Six-Day War, starting with the 1969 Rogers Plan, a much-ballyhooed new initiative has surfaced to solve the Israel-Arab and Israel-Palestinian Arab problems. And in case you have no idea what the Rogers Plan was, that’s the point.

Will anyone remember the current “Saudi initiative” 40 or even five years from now? Not unless it succeeds more than did in the past a dozen other highly publicized plans for bringing peace to Israel and its neighbors. And unless the Saudis are willing to go a lot further toward meeting minimal Israeli conditions for a peace agreement, they will not succeed.

In fact, although the Saudi initiative is in one way more acceptable to Israel than was the Rogers Plan, it is in another way far worse.

The Rogers Plan, named for President Nixon’s first secretary of state, called for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders in return for something less than a full Arab-Israeli peace and without mentioning the 1948 Palestinian refugees. The Saudi initiative — first cooked up by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah in 2002, subsequently put in the freezer, and now stuck in the microwave oven for rapid rewarming so that it can be served up at the Arab summit in Riyadh later this month — promises Israel a comprehensive peace with the Arab world if it withdraws to its pre-1967 frontiers, but also calls for implementation of Security Council Resolution 194, which speaks of the refugees’ right to return to their former homes.

Indeed, inasmuch as the signing of a peace agreement with Israel in return for a complete withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank and implementation of Resolution 194 has been the official position of the Palestinian Authority ever since the 1993 Oslo Agreement; and inasmuch as the prospect of a peace treaty in return for a complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights also has been dangled for many years by Syria, there is nothing new in the Saudi initiative except for one thing — its promise to “deliver” the rest of the Arab world.

Moreover, even this promise is of highly limited value, if not entirely superfluous. After all, if Israel were to make peace with Syria, nearly every other Arab country would be willing to recognize it even without Saudi intervention, while without a Syrian-Israeli peace agreement, the Saudis are unlikely to deliver even themselves.

The fact of the matter is that the Saudi initiative would not be relevant at all were it not for Hamas’ surprise electoral victory in last year’s Palestinian Authority elections. This is because, should Israel accept both Palestinian and Syrian terms, the only significant player in the Arab world that the Saudis would be needed to deliver would be Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its unwillingness to make peace with Israel under any circumstances. What the Saudis are really saying to Israel, then, is: Give in to the Palestinians and the Syrians on everything, and we’ll use our influence to get Hamas to go along. Or, to rephrase it: If you thought you were in a bad position before, Hamas has put you in an even worse one that only we can get you out of — provided that you surrender unconditionally on the issues of borders and refugees.

This isn’t, alas, a step forward. It is, if anything, a step backward.

The Saudis are not fools. On the contrary, when it comes to diplomacy, if not to other things, they are extremely sophisticated — enough to know, certainly, that there is no way that even the most dovish Israeli government can agree either to return all the way to the pre-1967 borders or to accept a massive influx of the descendants of the 1948 refugees. And because they know this, they also know that their initiative in its current form is no more than a propaganda ploy.

It’s a clever one, however, because a world desperate for a solution to the Israel-Palestinian and Israel-Arab conflicts is already clutching at it as if it were not the straw that it is, but a traversable bridge to peace. And when this bridge is not in the end crossed, many observers and governments will be, as usual, eager to blame Israel.

This is not to say that the Saudis would not like to see Israel at peace with the Arab world as part of their efforts to contain the spread of Iranian and Sunni jihadist influence. They are simply not, so far, willing to take any real risks to do so. If they were serious, they would be saying something more like this:

For any peace agreement to be signed between Israel and the Palestinians, or between Israel and the Syrians, substantive concessions will have to be made by both sides. For Israel, this means withdrawing from more of the territories conquered in 1967 than it wishes to, including parts of Jerusalem, and accepting partial responsibility for the 1948 refugee problem. For the Arabs, this means realizing that no Israeli withdrawal can be total and that the refugee problem can only be solved by financial compensation, not by the return of families to an Israel that is nothing like the country their ancestors fled from. If Israel agrees for its part to make the necessary compromises, we will use our influence in the Arab world to get the Palestinians and the Syrians to make them too.

This would be a real initiative. It would also meet, as is not the case with the current Saudi plan, with vociferous opposition in a good part of the Arab world, which would accuse Saudi Arabia of betraying the Arab cause. And precisely such opposition would be a sign that the Saudis are doing their best. Meanwhile, they’re simply pushing one more soon-to-be-forgotten Middle East peace initiative.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.