Over the past three years Syrian President Bashar Assad has been signaling a desire to resume the peace process.

Last week his foreign minister, Walid Muallem, added the words that Israel has always sought. He talked of negotiations without pre-conditions.

Up to now the Syrians demanded talks resume from the point they had left off. It is an allusion to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's readiness, a decade ago, to return the Golan Heights if Israel's conditions are met.

Syria still insists on an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 war lines, but in an interview with the Washington Post on Friday, Muallem said: "There is no precondition. A constructive dialogue has to start without preconditions."

The interviewer was cautious. "I am assuming ... President Assad ... agrees with the views that you expressed today," he checked.

"I am the foreign minister of Syria ... He is the leader. I am expressing his ideas," Muallem stated.

Yet Olmert did not seize the opportunity. It seemed a reversal of traditional Israeli policy.

"It is difficult for us to relate to these general statements about peace," he said in Jerusalem Wednesday. Syria is managing "an opposite reality ... We want peace but a pretense of peace is something else," he added.

Over the past few days Olmert has been arguing the Syrians "sometimes ... say one thing, sometimes they say another." They support Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas that "attempts the most horrible terrorist attacks." The Syrians are trying to topple the democratically elected government of Lebanon, support terror in Iraq and are collaborating with the "extremist fundamentalist Holocaust denying" regime in Iran, Olmert said.

He might have mixed feelings about talks with Damascus whose price for peace is clear: A withdrawal from the strategic Golan Heights. He reportedly said recently that as long as he is prime minister, Israel would stay in the Golan.

With a U.N. force policing a buffer zone, the Golan has been Israel's quietest border, quieter than its borders with Egypt and Jordan, its peace partners. Israel is under no real pressure to withdraw from that plateau.

Israelis suspect Assad advocates peace talks to deflect criticism of his regime, its suspected role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, and what Olmert termed "its continued support of terror in Iraq."

All along there was a lingering suspicion that he opposed talks because U.S. President George W. Bush did not want them.

Olmert seemed to confirm that suspicion at Sunday's Cabinet meeting.

"When the U.S. president, Israel's most important ally is fighting in every arena ... against all the elements trying to foil American policy, is this the time we say the opposite?" he reportedly asked.

Some of his critics are right beside him, at the Cabinet table. Defense Minister Amir Peretz insisted the Syrian option was "important."

"The effort to advance a dialogue with Syria ... deserves a much more significant handling," Peretz argued.

Dan Meridor, a highly respected former minister who recently headed a government-appointed committee on what Israel's defense policy should be in the coming decade, Wednesday told foreign correspondents that Olmert's attitude was "a big mistake. I am not sure an agreement can be reached with Syria ... But I think we (would) have a very clear strategic benefit if we succeed."

An agreement with Syria that would break the axis between Tehran and Damascus, lead to peace with Lebanon, the disarming or a halt to arming Hezbollah, expulsion of "all the offices of the terror organizations that are in Damascus," would be "a major shift," he said.

"Syria should be given the option or the choice between ... joining the good guys or staying with the bad guys. I am not sure they will take this option, maybe we call their bluff, maybe they will take it; but not to do it, I think, is a mistake," Meridor added.

Israelis recalled that in the early 1970s then-Prime Minister Golda Meir made short shrift of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's calls for peace talks. Then came the 1973 war in which Egypt and Syria dealt a painful surprise attack.

"At no point should Israel find itself in a situation in which an Arab country offers to negotiate and Israel refuses," insisted Ha'aretz columnist Yoel Marcus. In the 1970s, "our arrogant leaders maintained ... it was just a public relations ploy, until the Yom Kippur War hit us. We took him up on his offer late, and paid with 3,000 lives."

In an article in Yediot Aharonot, writer Amos Oz noted that if Syria would meet all of Israel's pre-conditions, "there would be no reason for Israel to negotiate the Golan's future ... Syrian acceptance of all of Israel's pre-conditions would make peace with it superfluous."

Olmert's indication that Israel must heed Washington's reluctance to see Israeli-Syrian talks drew scathing reactions.

The United States can risk tension with Syria but saying 'no' to possible peace with Syria means Israel is risking war, a Ha'aretz editorial noted.

Meridor maintained the era of sole American supremacy in the world is over. Extremist Islam is spreading, Iran is becoming nuclear and Israel must consider that.

"Bush will go home, but we will still be here," wrote Marcus. "If one of our greatest enemies extends a hand to us, we must first of all say 'yes.'"

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