NIGHT after night, convoys of Syrian tanks, with thousands of soldiers aboard are leaving their long time bases in Beirut, heading back east into Syria, and then south towards the border with Israel.
These are the largest Syrian troop movements in the past 14 years and although Syrian ministers have been asserting that they are purely defensive manoeuvres, they are raising fears of a new conflict in the Middle East.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, insisted yesterday that he did not believe a new Israeli Syrian military confrontation was imminent. Rather, he asserted, President Hafez alAssad was trying to exert "psychological pressure" on Israel to persuade the new government to moderate its uncompromising opposition to a land for peace deal in the Golan Heights.
But not everyone is quite so sanguine. A respected Israeli military commentator, Ron BenYishai, wrote yesterday that the Syrian redeployments and particularly the placing of elite Syrian commando units in the Golan area suggested that Damascus was readying the infrastructure for a military option, along with the diplomatic signals".
Underlining that suspicion, the US ambassador to Israel, Mr Martin Indyk, was yesterday reported to have passed on a message to Mr Netanyahu from Mr Assad to the effect that peaceful negotiation was not Syria's only option.
The troop movements are particularly significant given the marked rise in Israeli Syrian tension since the Netanyahu government took office here after May's elections.
The previous government, led by Mr Shimon Peres, had halted peace negotiations with Damascus in protest at President Assad's failure to condemn Islamic extremist suicide bombers who targeted Israel in February and March.
But that halt was expected to be temporary and a peace deal was slowly taking shape, involving an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan in return for fully normalised relations.
Mr Netanyahu has been urging President Assad to return to the negotiating table. But since the new prime minister has also made clear that he has no intention of relinquishing the Golan, Syria has spurned the invitation.
The US mediator, Mr Dennis Ross arrived in the region yesterday to try again to bring the sides together. But a Syrian radio commentator greeted him with the flat statement that his mission would fail since Mr Netanyahu was not genuinely interested in peace.
In the absence of negotiations, and with the status quo Israel's continued presence on the Golan unacceptable to the Syrians, the fears of conflict cannot lightly be dismissed.
AFP add: The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, and the Israeli Defence Minister, Mr Yitzhak Mordechai, will meet for the first time today to discuss Hebron and other issues, a senior Arafat aide said.
The meeting will take place at Beit Hanun in the Gaza Strip, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA cited a Palestinian official as saying.
Mr Arafat will also meet the US Middle East envoy, Mr Dennis Ross in Gaza today before the Mordechai meeting Mr Arafat, who returned yesterday from a trip to Egypt. Zimbabwe and Japan, confirmed that preparations for meeting Mr Mordechai were under way. At the top of the meeting's agenda would be to implement what has been agreed upon, especially the redeployment from Hebron, the isolation of Jerusalem and Israel's redeployment from other areas of the West Bank," Mr Arafat said.