We are seeing several varieties of political foreplay. Not all of it is designed to stimulate the apparent partner.

In one corner, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazzan) is upholding the Arafat policy of demanding a right of return for Palestinian refugees. If his target is Israel, he can forget it. He'll end his career like Arafat, as the chief of the headquarters building in Ramallah. If he wants to become President of Palestine, he had better be signalling to the Israelis and the Americans (nobody else counts) that he is engaging in foreplay only with his own people.

In another corner, we hear that President Hafez al-Assad of Syria is saying that he wants to enter into peace negotations with Israel, without pre-conditions. We also hear that, of course, he wants to begin negotiations where they stalled some years ago, when Israel's prime minister Ehud Barak said he was willing to withdraw from the Golan Heights, but not to the shore of the Sea of Galillee. That sounds like a pre-condition.

In this case, Israel also has pre-conditions: that Syria stop hosting and arming Hezbollah and Hamas.

What really is going on here, in my view, is that Assad is courting the American government and others who have begun serious criticism for his support of anti-Israel groups in his own capital and in Lebanon, for his support of anti-American fighters in Iraq, and for his continued occupation of Lebanon. He may also be trying to embarrass Israel by enticing it to reject negotiations at a time when its prime minister is up to his tummy in the problems associated with disengagement from Gaza. Ariel Sharon may not have enough political capital for that. He certainly does not have enough for withdrawing both from Gaza and the Golan Heights, when both Palestinians and Syrians engender more distrust than affection in Israeli public opinion.

We citizens can only react to what we hear in the media. There may be things going on in the dark that we cannot see.

I hope to live long enough to visit Damascus, and to dine once again during mid-winter in the outdoor restaurants of Jericho. Yet I fear that we are a long way from consummating anything. And as the books tell us, too much foreplay can tire the senses needed for serious activity.