MIDEAST / HOLDING THE HIGH GROUND : 23 Years Later, Golan Heights Still Towering Sign of Syria-Israel Rift

At the edge of this ruined Syrian city, on the ridge of the highest hill, the blue and white flag of Israel whipped in the breeze amid a thicket of antennas.

“I imagine they can see from there all the way to Damascus,” a government guide said, gazing up at the observation post atop Tell abu Nada.

If the Israeli troops guarding the post could not see the Syrian capital, 40 miles northeast across an open plain, their instruments surely could.

When the Syrians held the hills, 23 years ago, they too could look down the enemy’s throat, into the Jordan Valley around the Sea of Galilee, a fertile food basket of the young Israeli nation.

These are the Golan Heights, a broad fist of volcanic land that forms the frontier between Syria and Israel. The site is the key to any settlement between the two die-hard adversaries.

They are, however, nowhere near the negotiating table.

Prospects for peace between Israel and its Arab enemies--now little more than a flutter in the decades of ups and downs--have always found pessimism in Damascus.

When the latest revival of the peace process collapsed this summer, with the new Israeli government rejecting an American formula for talks with the Palestinians, Israel suggested instead bilateral talks with Syria. The offer has not been given the dignity of a reply from Damascus.

“(Syrian President) Hafez Assad has not fundamentally changed his position on Arab-Israeli peace negotiations,” U.S. Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian told The Times here recently. “In his view, there can be no room for what he calls separate deals.”

According to Djerejian, the hard-line Syrian leader insists that any solution be comprehensive, be based on U.N. resolutions endorsing the exchange of territory for peace and address “the issue of Palestinian national rights.”

Nevertheless, the ambassador said, “We do find more readiness in our dialogue with the Syrians to discuss more openly the peace process and discuss in conceptual terms whatever eventual negotiations will entail.

“We are keeping the doors open,” he said, “for Syria to play a constructive role and not to resort, as it has in the past, to that of spoiler.”

Djerejian said the Assad government continues to demand that any peace talks be within the framework of an international conference, which it considers the best forum to obtain guarantees. But he noted that “within this framework, Syria is willing to enter into bilateral discussions with Israel, especially concerning the return of the Golan Heights and whatever security arrangements are to be made.”

Ranging 2,000 feet or more above the Jordan Valley, the Golan’s hills and ridges provided Syrian gunners with perfect platforms for shelling Israel’s Galilee settlements in the two decades after Israeli independence. In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israeli forces seized the strategic heights, swept the Syrians from their positions and drove more than 30,000 villagers who lived in the hills onto the plain beyond.

In the 1973 Middle East War, Syrian soldiers pushed back into the ramparts briefly but were repulsed, and Israeli troops swept down onto the plain. Under the disengagement of 1974, the Israelis pulled back to the ridges, but not before dynamiting and bulldozing nearly every structure in Kuneitra, once a provincial capital with more than 50,000 people.

In 1981, Israel announced the annexation of the heights, a move that has not drawn international recognition.

The ruins of Kuneitra--piles of concrete and twisted reinforcing rods--are a badge of Syrian propaganda, which terms the city “Israel’s mark of shame” and vows to regain the adjoining heights. A handful of families live amid the wreckage, herding goats and tending small gardens.