TEL AVIV, Israel, Oct. 24 (UPI) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week once again brushed aside any notion of imminent peace talks with Syria. Instead, he said it was more important to create "joint platforms" with moderate Arabs regimes to achieve a breakthrough with the Palestinians.
Olmert discussed the situation in an address to the Israel Management Center in Tel Aviv Monday. Talk about negotiations with Syria "is not realistic these days. I am convinced of this. I have very serious reasons to believe they are not realistic," he stressed.
Syrian President Bahsar Assad has repeatedly called for peace talks and sometimes coupled it with a threat to resort to violence unless the talks produce results.
Olmert did not say what made him conclude that talks were "unrealistic," and in effect left it to the audience to trust his judgment.
One possible explanation is that Olmert realizes there is no chance of striking common ground with Syria now, especially since Israel's enemies believe it lost the war with Hezbollah and has been weakened. Under such circumstances Syria, which has always been a tough negotiator, would be even less willing to compromise.
Tel Aviv University's Center for National Strategic Studies this week analyzed Assad's thinking. Researcher Aiman Mansur wrote that because the Arab and Muslim world believes Israel lost the war, Syria is "trying to initiate a policy that would change the status quo in its relations with Israel."
Many Muslims consider the war's outcome as "Israel's biggest strategic defeat" since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In 33 days of fighting, in July and August, Israel failed to destroy Hezbollah's organizational and physical infrastructure. That suggests that Israel is weak and could be weakened still further through violence and terror.
Syria prefers to achieve its goals through negotiations, especially now that it believes it bet on the right horses -- Iran and Hezbollah -- and is in a position power, suggested Mansur.
Therefore Assad believes he can present his maximum demands: A complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights that Israel occupied during the 1967 war, access to the Sea of Galilee, and concessions to the Palestinians.
If Assad achieves his goals in talks with Israel, he would be perceived as someone who yielded nothing in the political track.
Observers note that would be especially important in Syria, a dictatorship controlled by Alawites, a minority Shiite sect whose Islamic heritage is controversial. Most Syrians are Muslim-Sunnis.
Mansur noted the Syrian regime is mainly concerned with ensuring its survival. The people under Assad are led "to do everything to strengthen the regime's stability," he added.
If there will are no talks, or if negotiations fail, observers say there is option number two: Damascus could resort to Hezbollah's tactics that, in the Arabs' view, worked.
Assad told Dubai TV that the present generation is the last generation willing to accept a peace process. When patience runs out, the people will turn to popular resistance, not a governmental one, he said.
According to Mansur, even if Syrian security services control that resistance, the Arabs and Muslims would support Syria because it would be engaging in a struggle for returning occupied Arab lands and preserving Arab dignity.
In such a confrontation Israel would be facing guerrilla tactics, not armies, and in coping with guerrillas Israel would be weak and inefficient.
Assad is nevertheless concerned the Israeli army might attack Syria. The head of the Israeli Military Intelligence Research Directorate, Gen. Yossi Baidatz, recently told the Cabinet that Assad is prepared to repel an attack. He deployed his rockets and troops differently than in the past.
Mansur noted that Assad repeatedly states his army is ready to resist an Israeli strike. Repelling such an attack would increase Syria's dignity, weaken Israel's deterrent image and increase the Syrian regime's legitimacy.
And if he fails to hold the Israelis back? Mansur suggested the Syrian regime would still survive because it would be perceived as actively fighting the "Zionist belligerency."
On several occasions Israeli leaders felt they had to choose whether to try and proceed on the Syrian or Palestinian track. They were reluctant to follow both at the same time and Olmert's comments Monday suggested he is no different.
"I am very concerned that some of those who propose holding these talks (with Syria) ... will only achieve one thing -- they may freeze the possibility of progress in the arena which is the most important arena the State of Israel has been in, remains and will remain in the future -- and that is the Palestinian arena," he said.
It seemed an odd statement since there have been no Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for years. The Palestinians have failed to form a stable government, and now seem to be on the verge of worse clashes between the nationalist Fatah and the Islamic Hamas. So far attempts to reconcile Hamas and Fatah have failed.
Olmert seemed to pin his hopes on "moderate, reasonable and balanced states, which abhor ... the threat inherent in the instability caused by the radical factors."
He said that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan's King Abdullah II, Saudi King Abdullah and other leaders are "potential partners to formulating joint regional policies with Israel.
"We must ... act to create joint platforms with them which could also assist ... in overcoming Palestinian issues," he stated.
