NEWS ANALYSIS : In Crucial U.S. Visit, Rabin to Bring ‘New Ideas’ for Peace : Mideast: Israeli leader seeks help advancing Syrian talks that leave his own people increasingly nervous.

A politically troubled Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin will travel to Washington today to explore with President Clinton ways to move forward Israel’s peace talks with Syria.

Israel celebrated the 47th anniversary of its independence on Thursday. But the fireworks and picnics that began Wednesday night could not conceal the mood of melancholy that has gripped the nation for months.

Melancholy is bad for Rabin, who is edging toward asking Israelis to begin paying a territorial price for peace on two fronts: the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

Both the Israelis and the Clinton Administration have billed Rabin’s weekend visit as a critical point, a last-ditch effort to bridge the big gaps between Syria and Israel and begin serious negotiations aimed at concluding a peace treaty between them within months.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres paved the way for the talks by meeting with Clinton in New York last week, and Rabin said he is bringing “new ideas” with him to his meeting with the President at the White House on Sunday.

Rabin’s problem is that he is trying to find a way to advance his talks with Syria at a time when many Israelis, even within his own Labor Party, are having serious second thoughts about making peace with their neighbors.

The first phase of Israeli-Palestinian interim peace arrangements is widely regarded as having largely failed, with the Palestinians being unable to prevent attacks from the Gaza Strip on Israelis and the Israelis unwilling to make good on commitments to extend self-rule and help build a Palestinian economic infrastructure.

Israel is supposed to reach agreement with the Palestinians by July 1 on redeployment of Israeli troops out of West Bank towns and villages and on holding Palestinian self-governing authority elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But even a phased Israeli shift of troops would entail political risks for Rabin. He expects political resistance not only from 140,000 Jewish settlers living in the West Bank but from the Likud opposition and elements in the army who fear they will be unable to protect settlers on the roads.

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Still, Rabin has insisted in messages passed to Syrian President Hafez Assad by Secretary of State Warren Christopher that he is willing to conclude a treaty in months and to bring it to Israeli voters in a referendum before the next national elections.

“I explained to Clinton that the difference between a peace treaty with Syria, if we achieve it, and all the previous peace agreements is that, in the past, any agreement was between us and one country,” Peres told Israeli reporters after last week’s meeting with Clinton in New York. “If we reach an agreement this time, it will in fact put an end to the state of war in the Middle East.”

In an interview he taped in Aqaba with Jordan’s King Hussein, aired Wednesday by Israel Television, Rabin erupted when asked about the status of talks with Syria. What is needed now, he said, is direct, secret and high-level talks between Israel and Syria; only such contacts paved the way for Israel’s agreement with Egypt, signed in 1978, and the peace treaty it signed with Jordan last year.

Rabin declined to elaborate on the “new ideas” he will present to Clinton.

But his options are limited, said one Israeli analyst.

“The only thing that will move this forward is if Rabin utters the magic words that Assad is waiting to hear,” said Prof. Moshe Maoz, a Syria specialist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “Rabin has got to whisper in Clinton’s ear that Israel is willing to withdraw on the Golan Heights to the international border.”

Maoz said it is essential that Clinton stay personally involved in the negotiations and that the Administration present its own proposals to bridge the differences on the depth and pace of an Israeli pullback and the structure of security measures each side will take.

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“The Americans hold the key,” Maoz said. “They can bring a blueprint for peace, they can offer to take the Syrians off the State Department’s terrorism list, they can help the Syrians secure aid from the Europeans and Japan.”

For months, Rabin and Peres have issued increasingly broad public hints that Israel is willing to withdraw from the strategic Golan Heights in exchange for full normalization of its ties with Syria.

This suggestion has met with opposition not only from the 14,000 Jewish settlers who live on the Golan and from rightist political parties but also from within Rabin’s Labor Party.

Taking advantage of the public mood, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu this week revealed that he had Christopher, during his last shuttle mission, pass his message to Assad: Likud is uninterested in signing a Syrian peace treaty.

Netanyahu told Israeli newspapers this week that Likud, if it forms the next government, will offer Syria a nonbelligerency pact. It will drop Labor’s demands for full normalization and, in return, refuse to relinquish the Golan. Israel captured the northern plateau in 1967.