DAMASCUS, (AFP) - Syria is leaving it up to the Lebanese Hezbollah Resistance group to respond to Israeli attacks on its troops in Lebanon, in order to avoid an Israeli trap aimed at dragging it into war, analysts said Monday.Israeli warplanes on Sunday destroyed a Syrian radar station in eastern Lebanon for the second time since mid-April, wounding two Syrian soldiers, in response to an attack by the Resistnce group Hezbollah on Israeli troops in the disputed Shebaa Farms.(Read photo caption below). The air-raid sparked another bombardment by Hezbollah which damaged an Israeli radar facility, but Syria confined itself to verbal denunciations and consultations with Lebanon. The Syrian news agency SANA, reporting the Israeli attack, stressed that it was Hezbollah which responded."Israel wants to push the region into war, thinking that a war will resolve its internal crisis" with the Palestinians, al-Baath, the ruling Baath party daily said.The government daily Tishrin for its part said that Syria, Lebanon and other Arab parties were trying to avoid war, while adding that "they will not abandon the right to resist and respond to aggression by all legitimate means."Following the election of right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in February, Israel announced that it would attack Syrian targets in response to operations by Hezbollah, which has killed three Israeli troops and captured another three since Israel ended its occupation of southern Lebanon in May Hezbollah, says it will continue to fight until the Shebaa Farms, captured by Israel from Syria in 1967 but since claimed by Lebanon with Syrian consent, are "restored".Syria meanwhile says it supports Hezbollah in its "legitimate fight" but denies Israeli allegations that the Resistance are under its direct operational control."An Israeli radar station was hit for a Syrian one, but it was Hezbollah which carried out the attack against Israel," Ibrahim Hamidi, Damascus correspondent for the London-based Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat commented."Syria does not want to give Sharon the gift of escalating the conflict, and the formula of leaving ripostes to Hezbollah has the aim of making Israel pay for its actions without engaging in a direct confrontation," he said.Syrian analyst Assaf Abboud said Sharon, facing the continuation of the nine-month-old Palestinian uprising despite a shaky ceasefire, could try military action "in a bid to impose Israel's will on the Arabs by force."Monday's official press also attacked the United States, accusing Washington of not putting pressure on Israel to withdraw from Arab land it had occupied since 1967, Hamidi noted.US Secretary of State Colin Powell omitted Damascus, a usual stop on such trips, when he made a tour of the Middle East last week, taking in Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan.PHOTO CAPTION:Israeli soldiers are seen with a 155mm Howitzer in Har Dov, a disputed area in northern Israel bordering Syria and Lebanon, during an exchange of fire between Israeli and Lebanese troops following an Israeli airstrike on a Syrian radar in Lebanon earlier Sunday July 1, 2001. Israeli warplanes attacked a Syrian military radar station in Lebanon Sunday in the second such strike in three months. (AP Photo/Yaron Kaminsky)