One of the most volatile issues in Israeli politics today is the question as to whether Israel should respond positively to Syrian President Bashar Assad's offer to begin peace negotiations. While Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert currently opposes such talks, his senior partner in the governing coalition, Labor party chair Amir Peretz, strongly endorses them. While the rhetoric on this question has been heated, in part because of the recently released report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), which advocates both US-Syrian talks and Israeli-Syrian talks leading to the return of the Golan Heights as part of a peace agreement, what has been lacking is an evaluation of the costs and benefits for Israel in entering into talks with Syria, and that will be the subject of this essay.