Israel-Syria: The War of Words Continues...

Responding to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's declaration that he was prepared to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad immediately and without preconditions, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told the pan-Arab newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat that Israel must first declare its intention to withdraw to the 1967 borders before any Syrian-Israeli talks can take place.

Israel-Syria Dialogues: Hopes vs. Realities

The Syrian foreign minister said that there is no point in "putting the cart before the horse" and that "Israel must withdraw from the occupied territories before Syria and Israel can meet".

Despite the exchange of threats between Damascus and West Jerusalem last month and the trilateral meeting of Hezbollah's Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Assad in Syria on 25 February, Israel's training exercise "Firestones 12", which took place in northern Israel last week, conspicuously omitted simulations of war with Syria. Instead, the Israel Defense Forces fought mock battles in preparation for clashes with Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The army also cancelled emergency call-up drills for large numbers of regular forces and reserves, fearing Syria might mistake such a move as mobilization for war.

But in line with Haaretz's Gideon Levy's article "Israel Does Not Want Peace," it can be said that Israel seeks no talks to resolve the problem; instead, it suspends this possibility while never missing any chance of upholding Damascus's hostility. At the end of the day, Syria is bound to play the "bad guy" for Israeli officials, isn't it?

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[Israel-Syria: The War of Words]

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The Israel-Syria-conflict: How did it all start ?
A first-hand eyewitness account

The Syrian Golan Heights were captured by Israel on 9 – 10 June 1967 in the course of the Six-Day War.
In 1997, years after Dayan, the Israeli Defense minister during the Six-Day War, died, the Israeli journalist Rami Tal published conversations he had with Dayan in 1976.
In that conversation Dayan claimed that 80 percent of the cross-border clashes between Israel and Syria in the years before the war were a result of Israeli provocation :

»I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plough someplace where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was.«

»I made a mistake in allowing the Israel conquest of the Golan Heights. As defense minister I should have stopped it because the Syrians were not threatening us at the time.«

Dayan also portrayed the desire of the residents in the Kibutzim beneath the Golan Heights that they be captured as stemming from the desire for their agricultural land and not primarily for security reasons.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan#Six_Day_War_.281967.29