Last Friday, Haaretz's military commentator Ze'ev Schiff accused the Barak and Sharon governments of responsibility for last summer's war. As Schiff put it, since the IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, "a threatening system [comprised of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran] arose [on Israel's northern border], which required a preemptive strike. The aversion to conducting such a strike eventually caused the war."

Schiff's analysis is correct. But since it stops short of drawing lessons for the present dangers, it is largely useless. Today, due to the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government's failure in the last war, we stand at the brink of the next one. And in the next war, the main enemy will be Syria, which will fight in coordination with Hizbullah and the Palestinians and under Iranian guidance.

Syria has been openly preparing for war since the last summer. And in the space of the past week alone, the Syrians twice announced their intention to attack Israel. On Monday, Syria's Propaganda Minister Moshen Bilal threatened that if Israel doesn't fully implement the Arab plan which calls for its retreat to the 1949 armistice lines and acceptance of millions of Arab immigrants, Syria will go to war. On Wednesday, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad said, "We always prepare ourselves. Israel is a fierce enemy. We have seen nothing from it but harm."

A constructive Israeli policy for contending with Syria must be based on a clear understanding of both Syria's interests and our own.

First there are Syria's war preparations. Many note optimistically that Syria has not moved its tanks to the border. But why would it?

Syria has no intention of fighting a conventional war against Israel. The war that Syria is planning will bear greater similarity to the insurgency in Iraq and Hizbullah's war last summer than to Syria's previous wars with Israel.

In the midst of last summer's war, Assad announced the formation of a new terror force tasked with infiltrating and attacking targets on the Golan Heights. The Syrian order of battle also includes a highly trained commando division; a massive artillery force capable of wreaking destruction on the Golan Heights and the Galilee; Scud ballistic missiles with ranges covering all of Israel; and chemical warheads that can be fitted on the Scuds.

This week CBN broadcast satellite footage of three hardened Syrian missile facilities outside of Homs and Hama. Syria aims to bleed Israel in order to force subsequent Israeli political concessions.

Syria has good reasons to go to war with Israel. Its forced departure from Lebanon in 2005 humiliated and weakened the regime both politically and economically. The regime views an achievement on the Golan Heights as a way to make up for the shame.

Moreover, Hizbullah's achievements in last summer's war challenge Syria to demonstrate that it too can humiliate Israel. It is also notable that June 11 will mark the fortieth anniversary of Israel's liberation of the Golan Heights.

Rather than contend with the Syrian challenge, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government has opted to ignore it. In his appearance before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Wednesday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, "We have no intention of attacking Syria."

He added, "The assessment of all of Israel's assessment bodies is that Syria is deploying defensively in line with a scenario of an attack against them. But we are also preparing for a situation where we are surprised."

The gist of Olmert's statements is that he is unwilling to decide how to deal with the Syrian threat. He would rather be "surprised" by the Syrians than prevent surprises by crafting an Israeli policy that would defend Israel's interests and preempt Syrian aggression.

The Israeli Left maintains that the only way to prevent war is by holding peace talks with Syria that will lead to an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. But former national security adviser Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland explained in a recent lecture at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs that under current conditions, in contrast to the Left's protestations, an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, even in return for a peace treaty, would increase the chance of war with Syria, and decrease Israel's chances of winning the war. Syria would have little reason to abide by the agreement after an Israeli withdrawal and Israel would lack international support to enforce the agreement after Syria breached it.

Rather than preemptively surrendering, Israel's strategic aims should be to degrade Syria's capacity to harm it and to change the Syrian regime's assessment of the attractiveness of attacking Israel.

Any plan to reduce Syria's capacity for aggression against Israel should properly begin with Schiff's analysis of last summer's war in Lebanon. Given the nature of the gathering threat, it makes sense to consider a preemptive strike on Syria's terror training camps, its missile sites and artillery bases. Such a strike should be guided by the lessons from the last war regarding the limitations of air power. Air strikes had limited results against hardened targets and they exposed Israel's flank to anti-Israel propagandists in the media war.

Changing Syria's cost-benefit analysis of war with Israel involves going beyond the military realm. To impact Syria's decision-making loop, Israel must also consider the economic and political realities facing the Assad regime.

Syria is an economic basket case. In a study of the Syrian economy published this week, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) noted that since the US-led invasion of Iraq, some one million Iraqis have fled to Syria. Rather than stimulate economic growth, due to the corruption and economic incompetence of the regime, the population inflow has simply caused massive inflation. Aside from this, Syria's oil revenues are steadily declining. US and EU economic sanctions instituted in recent years have made it impossible for Syria to receive financial credits or significantly expand its international trade. Today the regime can barely provide basic services to the population.