On one level the almost simultaneous announcements yesterday from Jerusalem and Damascus confirming the holding of indirect peace talks under Turkish auspices won’t come as a surprise to readers of our Eli Lake. He reported on April 25 that the Syrians were saying that Prime Minister Olmert would relinquish the Golan Heights. He noted the Israelis were uncharacteristically mum, but reported that Syria’s expatriates minister, Buthaina Shaaban, had instructed Prime Minister Erdogan to deliver the message. The Syrian told Al-Jazeera: “Olmert is ready for peace with Syria on the grounds of the return of the Golan Heights in full to Syria.”

Yet on another level, the peace feelers raise questions about American and Israeli interests and the course of the war against Islamist terror. Is it possible, and if so is it proper, to reach an agreement with a state such as Syria? Except for its one time association in 1991 with the American-led coalition that ousted Saddam Hussein’s invasion force from Kuwait, Syria has been and is on the wrong side of the war against Islamic terror. It sponsors terrorist groups and offers them safe haven; it is loyal to Iran’s objectives and backs Iran’s allies, including Hamas and Hezbollah.

Some will argue that when the Syrian Alawite dictators who run Syria reach even informal agreements, they have been, at least in some important instances, prepared to uphold their end of the bargain. During the years Syria occupied Lebanon, it had an arrangement with Israel that specified an east-west line cutting across the land of the cedars which their troops would not cross; there were also agreements on no fly zones. For the most part, the Syrians, ever respectful of Israeli power, followed the rules, though not always. And they brazenly broke other promises, permitting a huge rearming of Hezbollah terrorist forces and operating a secret police network that doomed democracy in Lebanon.

But even were Syria genuinely interested in climbing down from the tree where it is perched with its terrorist allies, would it be proper to enter into talks with a regime that combines the excesses of both National Socialism and communism? The answer will be for Israelis to determine. Compared to the last time Israel-Syria talks were held — an agreement was dickered over in 1999 — Syria has fewer of its own troops entrenched in Lebanon and is more isolated from its sister Arab regimes because it hitched its wagon to Iran’s star. It is also under a graver threat from Al Qaeda-aligned salafists.

But clearly American interests do not lie in a peace with the current regime in Damascus, with which our relations are close to a point of rupture. They have deteriorated sharply from when President Assad, father of the current Syrian strongman, would receive administration officials and even meet with the an American president. Syria is also moving against the nascent democracy in Lebanon where its ally, Hezbollah, gained veto power in the Lebanese cabinet, a result of its putsch earlier this month. Hezbollah’s ultimate loyalties are to Iran and the idea of a Shi’ite Moslem ascendancy, not to the Arab nationalist and fascist ideas which provide the rational for the Alawite’s minority rule.

Today, moreover, more than 100,000 American GIs are operating just east of Syria’s border with Iraq. In previous talks, it was understood that aside from the specific contours of an agreement with Israel, Syria expected Israel’s assistance in securing its role in Lebanon and righting relations with America. That is obviously not a role that it would benefit Israel to play. The 1999 talks may have, in theory, resolved a few details of the dispute, but they did nothing to resolve the strategic and moral differences between Syria and the free world. So the likelihood is that the talks that were confirmed yesterday to be underway indirectly will founder on the Alawite epiphany that peace with the West would bring new dangers from the Iranian-backed factions. So peace with Syria will have to await a democratic revolution in Tehran.