DAMASCUS, May 25 (AFP) - Syria's official press warned Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak on Tuesday he would meet the same fate as his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu unless he joined the Mideast peace process. Al-Baath, newspaper of the ruling Baath party, urged Barak to take note of a "fundamental truth: the peace process is an inescapable reality which he cannot ignore ... if he wants to avoid the defeats and the domestic and international isolation of his predecessor." The newspaper called on the Israeli prime minister-elect to "profit from the experience of his predecessor and to realize that Israel cannot benefit from aggression and threats or impose fait accomplis on the Arabs." Syria has reacted guardedly and adopted a wait-and-see attitude to the Labor party leader's crushing defeat of Netanyahu, which has revived hopes elsewhere of putting the troubled peace process back on track. Syria's ruling National Progressive Front (NPF) said in a statement Monday it would be "premature" to issue a pronouncement on the Israeli elections. "It would be premature to make any conclusions from the Israeli elections and to define the next steps" in the peace process," the NPF statement said. "Some of the positions expressed (by Barak) after the elections lend themselves to a desire to exercise caution and avoid hasty judgments. "Only actions can determine the next step in the peace process ... in which the principle of land for peace must apply," the NPF said following a meeting of its leadership in Damascus. The NPF, which includes President Hafez al-Assad's Baath party, also reiterated that Syria was ready to resume peace negotiations with Israel suspended since February 1996. Syria is demanding that the talks resume where it says they left off -- with an Israeli pledge to withdraw from the Golan Heights captured by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.  