Suddenly, the World Is Aware of Golan Heights : Mideast: Remote and rocky, its future is thrown into doubt by Syria’s willingness to talk peace.

Dudi Ben-Ami, a bearded park ranger, collects artifacts he says show that Jews inhabited the Golan Heights until about 1,300 years ago, when they fled local turmoil. On Friday, he was wondering if any would live there next year.

“All this peace talk ignores the fact that we live and make our living here,” said Ben-Ami, a resident since Israel occupied the former territory of Syria 24 years ago.

The Golan Heights, for years a remote element among issues that defined chances for peace in the Middle East, has moved into the limelight, taking its place alongside the question of Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The rocky Golan landscape, closer by half to Damascus than to Jerusalem, had become a permanent fixture in Israeli life. No one, it seemed, could imagine that Syria’s President Hafez Assad, a committed enemy of Israel, might one day change his mind and decide to sit and talk peace.

Yet this willingness, pronounced by Secretary of State James A. Baker III as an “extraordinarily important and positive step,” has thrown the future of the strategic highlands into doubt.

According to Baker and President Bush, Assad is ready to sit down in direct negotiations with Israel, as long as the United Nations acts as an observer and there is a chance for an inaugural regional conference, which includes the United States and the Soviet Union, to meet again if any bilateral talks ultimately stall.

Assad, viewed as one of the Middle East’s canniest leaders as well as one of the region’s most ruthless, expects to get back the Golan Heights, which Syria lost to Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.

In 1981, Israel annexed the heights, which loom in blackish stone above the Sea of Galilee. Along with elaborate military barriers to invasion, small farming communities were established in the heights to ensure an Israeli presence.

“It’s hard to believe the story is suddenly going to become the Golan Heights. Syria only wants this place for political reasons. We live and work here,” said Ben-Ami, who plans to open a shop soon, selling replicas of ancient tools made from flint.

The population of the rolling, 500-square-mile area is relatively sparse: 12,000 Israelis and about the same number of Druze, a breakaway Muslim sect of longtime inhabitants. Housing Minister Ariel Sharon, who is committed to keeping every piece of land now occupied by Israel, recently pledged to triple the population in three years. He inaugurated a new settlement to back up his promise.

Ben-Ami admits there is an image problem that he fears may make the heights expendable: most Israelis consider the land too far away to make their home there. “People in Tel Aviv seem to think this is Finland,” he said.

Ben-Ami said the heights are important to Israel for several reasons. For one thing, Syria once used them to bombard Israeli towns and farms in the plains below. Moreover, part of Israel’s water supply rises on the heights, and Syrian efforts to divert that water was a stimulant for the 1967 war.

“We have to think in long-range terms,” argued Ben-Ami. “There have been wars here for thousands of years. I am not one of those who believe peace is going to come.”

His fervent arguments are not fully shared, even by hard-nosed security advocates. “You know, we have to take a good look at the heights,” said government spokesman Yossi Olmert, an expert on Syrian affairs. “As long as they are demilitarized, it might not make too much difference if Syria flies its flag there. The heights do not thrust into our populated gut like the West Bank.”

In any event, Israel’s government has begun to play down the possibility of a breakthrough--or for that matter, a full breakdown--on Sunday, when Baker is scheduled to arrive for talks with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. The secretary of state is trying to set up talks between Israel, Arab governments and the Palestinians.

In a speech to foreign fund-raisers Thursday, Shamir belittled the excitement building around Assad’s reply. “Only dictators are capable of outwardly talking peace and projecting moderation while acquiring immense quantities of weapons of destruction and preparing for war,” he said.

Shamir directed attention toward another possible snag: the makeup of a Palestinian delegation to discuss the future of the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians want one of their delegates to be from Jerusalem to bolster their claim to the Arab half of the city.

“You know we have our position. We will not negotiate about Jerusalem and therefore we will not talk with any Arabs living in East Jerusalem,” Shamir told reporters.

Defense Minister Moshe Arens also dampened speculation about dramatic progress. “I don’t think Baker will leave here with an agreement that is acceptable to all sides and will bring about the meeting he wants to organize,” Arens told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

Government spokesman Olmert said he expects partial steps forward. “Shamir could make positive gestures on some things, and then there could be further discussions,” he predicted.

In general, events appear to be moving too fast for the Shamir government, which was bothered by the positive publicity given Assad’s response to appeals from Bush for talks. Israeli officials have demanded a copy of Assad’s written acceptance of talks to see exactly where agreement and differences lie.

“The most important question is this: Is Syria prepared at this juncture to engage in direct negotiations, bilaterally, face-to-face with us, in order to make peace?” Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked on American television.

Ben-Ami, 53, sitting in the shade outside the ruins of an old Jewish village here, suggests that whether Assad talks or not is unimportant. “If Baker came here, I would tell him that this is just as much a part of Israel as California is of the United States. . . . After all, the Americans took (California) from the Mexicans.”

Up the road, at the Golan Heights Winery, employees were both pondering their fate should Syria take over and planning against such an eventuality.

“We hope that any just peace will recognize the labor of the people here and the industry they built,” said Jim Klein, production manager and a native of Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, the farms that contribute grapes to the vineyards were busy planting new vines that will not yield fruit for seven years.