Such fluctuations are not new to this track. At the height of the post-Madrid peace process, when the Clinton administration and four Israeli prime ministers actually gave the Syrian track preference over the Palestinian track, several intense efforts were invested in achieving a Syrian-Israeli deal. They ended in failure and tilted the peace process toward the Palestinians and Jordan.

During the first six years of the current decade, the Israeli-Syrian track seemed to have lost all relevance due to the convergence of several developments: First, President Hafez Assad's death and his son and successor's failure to establish himself as an authoritative figure; second, Ariel Sharon's ascent to power in Israel and his determination to focus on the Palestinian issue and reluctance to withdraw from the Golan; third, the transformation of the Syrian-Iranian alliance and partnership of the 1990s into an unequal relationship between an Iranian senior and a Syrian junior partner; and fourth, the deterioration of Syria's relationship with the Bush administration, initially in 2003 over Iraq and then, in 2005, over Lebanon.

The Bush administration's and the American president's personal animosity toward Syria and President Bashar Assad was such that when Sharon's successor, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, began to tinker with the idea of renewing negotiations with Syria, he was told in no uncertain terms by Washington that the Bush administration objected to a diplomatic initiative that would help Syria steer its way out of isolation and rebuild its legitimacy in the international arena.

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