The abuse of noble humanitarian efforts is an ugly thing. Their abuse by terrorists and by states and regimes that sponsor terrorism is even uglier. Amid the excited voices rising within an ever-eager Israeli society in response to Syrian statements and signals, we have almost lost sight of the vicious manner in which Syria and radical Iranian elements have conspired to resume the supply of arms to Hizballah - one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world, whose guns and missiles are presently aimed at large parts of northern Israel.

In recent years, it has become impossible for the Iranians to fly weapon supplies through Turkish airspace to Syria, where they were driven over land to Lebanon, for use by Hizballah. At the request of Israel, backed by the United States, the Turks began to monitor closely what might be flown in Iranian planes bound for Damascus. For obvious reasons, Iraq, too, has become an untenable route. Hizballah and its masters in Tehran faced a serious problem. Suddenly, the human catastrophe at the stricken city of Bam, where 30,000 or more persons have perished in one of the most devastating earthquakes in history, provided the terrorists, as Israeli intelligence discovered, with a new option. The Syrian planes sent to Iran with aid to the survivors were quickly and secretly reloaded, prior to their return, with military supplies for Hizballah and, in Damascus, unloaded under equally clandestine procedures. None of this could have happened without the explicit authorization of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

Here, in other words, was the obverse side of the soft-spoken Syrian calls for an early resumption of negotiations "where they had been cut off" in March 2000. To understand the role of terror in the "tool kit" of Syrian (and Palestinian) negotiators, we must recognize that from their point of view, Yasir Arafat and the Assad dynasty - at least since their Soviet sponsors died on them - have had to negotiate from a position of weakness; Israeli military power, economic achievements, and special relationship with the United States were all beyond the reach of Syria or the Palestinians. Thus, two strategies, which should seem to be contradictory, but in their minds, complemented each other, came into focus:

True, as early as 1993, the late Yitzhak Rabin had told the U.S. secretary of state at the time, Warren Christopher, that he would be willing to contemplate a total withdrawal - if, and only if, Israel's key conditions were met. He was mainly concerned with security measures (early warning and demilitarized zones) to compensate for the loss of the high ground, as well as with timetables and the depth of normalization. He never meant, however, for this "deposit" (as it has come to be known) to be intimated to the Syrians at the onset of negotiations, and he was livid with the Americans for doing so. Indeed, Hafez Al-Assad spent the next precious two years trying to avoid any commitment, while "pocketing" what he had been "promised." Syrian resentment of the Oslo process and of the "breaking of Arab ranks" by the Palestinians and the Jordanians was translated into enhanced support for terrorist groups, while in Lebanon Hizballah was used by the Syrians to bleed the IDF and to push Israel to the Golan bargaining table on their terms. By the time of his assassination in November 1995, Rabin had come to doubt whether the Syrians ever had meant to do anything beyond putting themselves in President Bill Clinton's good graces.

Efforts were resumed when Ehud Barak was elected, and in December 1999 they were elevated beyond the diplomatic and military level - only for Israel to be treated to the spectacle of a smug Syrian foreign minister, Faruq Al-Shara, refusing to demean himself by actually shaking hands with our prime minister.

By the time Clinton met Assad himself in Geneva, on March 26, 2000, it became quite clear that the Syrians had no intention of offering any reasonable compromise (or of ever having a "normal" relationship). The crisis came over the Israeli request to retain a narrow strip of land around Lake Tiberias, well within our side according to the old international border, but not according to the Syrian position, which looks upon their (small) territorial gains in 1948 and 1950 as sacrosanct, while at the same time seeking to deny Israel any gains from our "vile aggression" in 1967. It is over this point of principle, a case of "identity politics" triumphant over all practical considerations (they were not interested in the Kinneret water or the fish thereof) that the talks came to a halt - with the Clinton administration placing the blame squarely on Assad. Then came, in quick succession, Israel's "unilateral" withdrawal from Lebanon, the elder Assad's death (replaced by his son, Bashar, an eye doctor ill equipped to depart from his father's policies), the attempt to achieve a breakthrough with the Palestinians at Camp David, and Arafat's war.

Now, evidently shaken by the sight of Saddam Hussein's shameful capture and the consolidation of American power in the region, as well as by the lopsided U.S. congressional votes on the Syria Accountability Act (398 to 4 in the House; 86 to 4 in the Senate - a clear case of effective lobbying by AJC, among others, translated into real political results in Damascus), Assad is in a hurry to mend his fences with the Turks, with the U.S. (which might learn from Saddam details of the Syrian role in the prewar months), and, to some extent, with Israel. A real debate is on, at various levels of the Israeli establishment - and certainly in the media and the political domain - as to how we should respond. It makes no sense, in political terms, to repeat the painful convulsions of the 1990s, even while the government confronts the right-wing parties over the future of isolated Gaza Strip and West Bank settlements (the massive demonstration organized by the Settlements Council on January 11 indicated just how tough this fight would be), only to find out that the Syrians have used us to shelter themselves from American anger, while sticking to their two tools, as described above.

On the other hand, if real indications are offered that the Syrians are willing to rewrite their own rules - to recognize the dangerous futility of terror as a tool, and to walk away from the equally futile adherence to the June 4, 1967, lines - and to negotiate a territorial compromise in good faith, they will, by necessity, be met with an Israeli willingness to come to the table (and the same is true for the Palestinians). Yes, they will get less than they could have in 2000. Israeli politics have changed, and in the post-9/11 world, there is a price to be paid for years of support for terrorism. But this is just the way things are. The Syrian regime, like all of us in the real world, will need to adjust if it wants to survive.