The Israeli regional power, mainly in military and economic sense, is not matched by the Syrian one. Meanwhile, the total support by dominant world powers to Israel is also biased toward Israel. Thus, at the moment at least, it appears that peace negotiations with Israel will put Syria more in the position of a surrendering party than that of an equal participant.
The imbalance in the power scale towards Israel is waning down in all aspects since the collapse of the cold war to its latest military defeat by Hizbulla in 2006. Syria may think that it is more to its advantage to play on the time factor, until its own power and those of its allies are increased, both militarily and economically (Iran’s rising power, EU relations with Syria, changes in US government, etc).
