How can you tell that August is around the corner? Because the country is talking itself silly over the terrible war that we are supposedly expecting this summer.

"Missiles could disrupt the lives of millions and knock out major infrastructure," screams Yedioth Ahronoth in headlines plastered across the entire width of the page. "Is Syria heading for war?" asks Ma'ariv rhetorically, with lots more on pages 2 and 3.

"War: Yes or no?" the paper continues in pop quiz style, complete with clues. On the right is a box entitled "Signs of war." On the left is a box entitled "Reasons to avoid war." This is topped off with some political analysis - "offensive or defensive?" The only thing missing is a list of prizes.

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Listening to the leaks from military sources, the citizens of this country are starting to wonder if they shouldn't apply for foreign passports, as per Avraham Burg's advice, and make a beeline out of here. Wouldn't it be nice to spend the summer vacation in a nice, quiet place - like London, for example - before the horrific battle envisioned by our soothsayers comes to pass?

Multiple versions of this summer's war have been trickling down from defense sources. One version envisages a combined Hezbollah-Syrian-Iranian attack. A revised version has the threesome being joined by Hamas. According to yet another version, Hezbollah will attack and Syria will help out with long-range missiles. Some see Syria armed from head to toe, carrying out a land grab on the Golan Heights without launching a full-fledged war. Then there's the scenario of the Israeli home front being bombarded by state-of-the-art ballistic missiles - a kind of score-settling for all the hard knocks suffered by the Syrians in the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars.

Our military intelligence chief, Major General Amos Yadlin, says Syria has demonstrated readiness to go to war on more than one occasion, but that doesn't mean it is interested in going to war. Syria may be prepared for war, but it is not planning a war in the near future. The chief of staff, on the other hand, is gearing up for the possibility of deterioration on the northern front. In his eyes, the scenario of war in the North this summer is not at all far-fetched.

War or no war, one thing is sure: This time, our generals can say they saw it all coming - not only what happened, but also what didn't happen.

Large-scale war games conducted by the Syrian army near the border had all our big chiefs up in arms. But Israel's war games in the Negev, preparing for a Syrian offensive, could have the same effect on Bashar Assad.

In these sensitive times, the media saw fit to publish an awe-inspiring picture of Israeli air force jets flying in formation. The caption said: "Training for long-haul flights." A heavy-handed hint, methinks. As if long-range F-15s and F-16s were purchased for performing stunts on Independence Day. Has anyone in these parts considered how Assad might interpret these photos and captions?

The Golan Heights is not Assad's worst problem. He is more worried about American sanctions in the wake of Syria's involvement in Iraq, ties with Iran and aid to Hezbollah, to get it back into shape after the Second Lebanon War. If Assad is proposing "peace talks without preconditions," one can be sure it is not out of great love for Israel.

Despite Syria's support of terror organizations fighting Israel, the border between the two countries is quiet. If Syria is manufacturing and purchasing long-range cruise missiles with chemical warheads, it must be apprehensive about an Israeli attack. Coming from the dictatorship world, Assad is liable to think that Israel wants to erase the fiasco of the Second Lebanon War by means of a strike against Damascus. An attack like that could bring down the Alawite regime and spell the end of Assad.

Syria is not one of those countries that goes to war all of a sudden, says a political analyst who knows the score. In fact, the whole idea of a war this summer is absurd. Why would Syria be the one to declare war when no Arab country has ever gone into battle alone against Israel? With Assad trying to inch closer toward the West, Syrian tourism on the rise and moderate Islamic countries headed by Saudi Arabia urging Assad to act wisely and cautiously, Israel's leaders need to focus on Assad's peace proposal and stop driving him crazy with their hot air forecasts for August.