Reform Party of Syria (RPS)

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview on Israeli radio, warned against a possible all-out war with Syria if on-going negotiations fail. He said: "After such a (possible) war, both sides will once again return to the negotiations' table and will discuss the same issues they were discussing for 15 years."

Not that Barak needs a lesson in how to strike fear in Assad's heart, but RPS finds it way too strange for him to threaten the regime in Damascus while telling it simultaneously it will survive the war to make peace.

If Assad knows he will survive, he will welcome a war with Israel because it will turn him into an Arab hero of Gargantuan proportions. The petro-dollar pouring-in will help him build a stronger Ba'athist regime able to threaten ten-fold his neighbors.

Unwittingly, Barak may have just lost the war even before he can start it. And if no war is intended, he has failed, because of the choice of his words, to really have any meaningful effect on Assad.

The left in Israel, to this day, remains clueless about Arabs.