BEIRUT -- There is little new about Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's proposal for full Arab "normalization" with Israel in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and the establishment of a Palestine state. A vision more than a plan, it leaves vague or unmentioned potential stumbling blocks such as who has sovereignty over the holy places and Palestinian refugees' "right of return." It simply lays out what the peace process would bring: the fulfillment of what Israel has always been striving for -- its acceptance by and integration into the Arab region, a portion of whose territory it conquered and occupied and whose inhabitants it drove out.

No one is better qualified to promote this initiative than Abdullah, both because of the reputation he has earned as a strong, straightforward and uncorrupted leader, and because of the political, economic and religious weight of the Saudi kingdom. His initiative is a wholly Arab one, not only because it is the brainchild of an Arab leader but also because it should be collectively endorsed by the Arab world -- an action that could take place at the Arab summit this month in Beirut.

Abdullah's initiative comes at a time of looming emergency, not only for the Palestinians and Israelis but for the region. Since the intifada began, the Arab regimes, fearful of Israeli retaliation or U.S. wrath, have done next to nothing to honor what their people regard as their obligation to support their fellow Arabs in Palestine. Such weakness and inaction cannot, the critics say, protect Arab regimes forever. Doing nothing will eventually prove far more dangerous than doing something.

"We have no idea," wrote a columnist in the Beirut newspaper al-Nahar, "how the Arab nation can suffer the endless moral humiliations and insults that have been hurled at it for a year and a half, day in day out," but "anger in this part of the world is boiling over."

Despite themselves, the regimes will be drawn into the fray. The circumstances in which it happens and the forms it takes -- planned or involuntary, diplomatic or military, an action by Hezbollah or the outcome of political upheaval in Palestinian-dominated Jordan -- are hard to foresee; but relentless escalation in the territories can only hasten the day when it does.

It was often said that without Arab backing the intifada would fizzle out, and that was why some regimes -- notably Jordan and Egypt -- withheld it. But even without Arab backing the Palestinian are giving almost as good as they get. Their ability to inflict casualties has dramatically risen. It is no exaggeration to say that in the past two weeks they have struck a heavy blow at the whole system of deterrence on which its security is based.

This is a great failure for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. What remains for this champion of violent solutions other than yet more violence and -- if that does not work -- the toppling of the Palestine Authority, the complete reconquest of the territories or even the "transfer" of Palestinians to neighboring Arab countries? These are solutions to which his constituents and his own instincts, are pushing him.

Yet if they came to pass they would surely be as disastrous for Israel as they would be for the Arab world, dragging it into a struggle with the whole region that is beyond its resources to sustain.

At this critical juncture, and out of the heart of this Arab inaction and disarray, has come Abdullah's peace offering -- an offer to save Israel from itself.

Sharon is congenitally incapable of taking it up. But as the Saudis make clear, it is not addressed to him or his government but rather to those of the Israeli public who grasp what a failure Sharon's Greater Israel designs -- the real agenda behind his "war on terror" -- are and what greater failure and peril they portend.

At a time when Arab popular hostility toward Israel is at its height and no Arab leader has shown himself more cognizant of it than he, Abdullah has offered the Israeli people a platform from which to turn their catastrophic leader out of office. Some have got the message. The diplomatic correspondent of Haaretz wrote: "This is precisely the time when a responsible opposition should pick up the Arab gauntlet and place it, trumpets blaring, at the top of the political agenda."

Abdullah's initiative has garnered wide Palestinian and Arab support. Among the key Arab players, even Syrian President Bashar Assad, the likeliest spoiler, appears to have rallied to it. The intifada threatens them all, and it may be collective helplessness and fear that inspires them, but it has been a long time since Arab regimes have exhibited such a community of purpose. The Europeans like it, and U.S. President George W. Bush has declared it a new "opening" for his own re-engagement in the deepening crisis.

But what it requires, above all, is a positive response from the Israelis; and that, in turn, requires a swift resolution of the conflict -- which has continued since peacemaking began -- between those ready to embrace the historic compromise Palestinians and Arabs are offering and those who, rejecting it, are ready for endless and ultimately self-destructive war.