TWICE towards the end of last year, tension on the Israeli Syrian border came dangerously close to escalating into direct conflict. Now, with the Israeli Palestinian peace effort wobbling back on track following Israel's partial military withdrawal from Hebron, the Israelis and the Syrians are quietly trying to break their negotiating impasse too - but are playing cat and mouse over the terms for resuming contacts.
At a briefing for dozens of foreign diplomats in Jerusalem yesterday, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, insisted that Israel was ready to return to the negotiating table right away.
The Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has said the same thing several times in recent days. Indeed the issue is likely to top his agenda when he flies to Washington next month for a meeting with President Clinton.
However, the official Syrian line thus far is that Israel's overtures are disingenuous. The Syrian Foreign Minister, Mr Farouq aSharaa, said yesterday that there was nothing new in Mr Levy's, stated readiness to restart talks on the basis of UN resolutions 242 and 338, the so called "land for peace" resolutions.
And the Syrian state daily Tishreen issued another assault on the Prime Minister, accusing him of "expansionist greed".
The root of the Israeli Syrian dispute is Israel's control of the Golan Heights, captured in 1967. President Hafez Assad of Syria and the late Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, were working towards a deal whereby Israel would relinquish the Golan in exchange for fully normalised relations.
But Mr Assad, trying to drive a hard bargain, was left with no partner when Mr Rabin was assassinated in November 1995.
Mr Netanyahu, bent on portraying the Rabin government as too ready for compromise, claimed soon after taking office that Mr Rabin had agreed in principle to withdraw to the pre 1967 border lines, giving Syria partial control of the Sea of Galilee.
Whatever the dubious short term domestic benefit of publicising such a claim, it is clearly backfiring now, since the Syrians, to Mr Netanyahu's discomfiture, are demanding that negotiations be resumed where they left off under Mr Rabin resumed, that is, on the point of an accord highly favourable to Damascus.
While the US, fresh from its success in forcing through the Hebron deal, is now bent on jumpstarting Israeli Syrian talks, it is the Europeans who are taking the more prominent role. With the French in the lead, Europe is attempting to help mediate the conditions for renewed contacts.
Israel is deeply concerned about the risk of war should talks not resume soon - indeed, a new Mossad intelligence assessment ranks Syria's non conventional missile capability at the head of the list of potential security threats to the state.
And it is a measure of that concern that, for once, Israel is welcoming rather than objecting to the European involvement.
The South African cabinet has deferred a decision on a controversial arms sale to Syria, the cabinet secretary, Mr Jakes Gerwel, said after President Mandela and ministers discussed the issue. The US has threatened to cut off aid over the proposed contract to provide tank gun aiming systems to Damascus.