QUNEITRA, Syria -- The skulls in open, looted coffins lay gaping at the sun, left just as Syria says it found them 20 years ago after withdrawing Israeli forces demolished the vacated city.
The Syrians have not reburied the bones, nor rebuilt any of the city, captured by Israel in 1967 and returned -- crushed -- in 1974. They keep Quneitra as a macabre monument to what they say is Israeli brutality.
It is just as much a monument to Syrian fears of Israel.
Syria, the most steadfast of Israel's enemies in the Middle East, is grappling with those anxieties as it inches ever so slowly to what observers here say is an inevitable peace with its foe.
This year or next, Syria is expected to come to some sort of terms and open its doors -- perhaps ever so slightly -- to neighbors long castigated as warmongering, aggressive and untrustworthy -- which is just about the way the Israelis view the Syrians.
The regime here has been slowly preparing its people for that day for more than two years. But many Syrians are jittery about the prospects. They fear that the Israelis will dominate them in peace instead of war.
"We fear an invasion. We fear an economic invasion, an invasion of the media, an invasion of culture, an invasion of tourism," said a Syrian architect. Like others who spoke privately, he dared not be identified.
"They will try to dictate from Israel," he continued. "They are like a monster, an octopus. You don't know the Zionists."
Such nervousness is common here, where Israel has been vilified daily in the official media for four decades. In this closed regime, few Syrians have much contact with the outside to temper the steady diet of propaganda.
Syrian President Hafez el Assad still has total control to make a peace deal. But the reservations of his people may serve as a caution light for him, if he does not want to get too far ahead of popular sentiment.
"People were suffering here for 40 years on the principle that we have to fight and stand against Israel," said an author in Damascus. "Now to be told that it was a mistake all those years? People are not going to be happy about this peace."
"It could be very dangerous for Assad," added a Syrian businessman. "It lets the genie out of the bottle. The whole
foundation of this regime's temple -- fighting Israel-- is suddenly gone."
"I want peace," said a pharmacist. "But I don't want Israel to take advantage of us. They are good business people. They have a lot of power because of America. They might take over the economy and make us dependent on them."
To be sure, some are looking forward to the advantages of peace.
About 10 miles north of Quneitra, Suliman Mustafa stands on a dusty bluff opposite Majdal Shams, a hillside town within the Israeli lines of the Golan Heights. With a bullhorn, he shouts across 250 yards to his mother and father, who reply by yelling.
Families split
Families were split when Israel captured the Golan Heights in TTC 1967, and permission to cross the lines is rare. Mr. Mustafa's six ++ children have never met their grandmother, aunts or uncles. There is no telephone communication or mail between Israel and Syria, still formally at war.
"My father is preparing to have a medical operation, and we're asking about it," said Mr. Mustafa, who brought his family 35 miles from Damascus to carry on this open-air, shouted dialog. "It's a terrible way to talk. But there is no other way."
If there is a peace agreement, Syria will insist that Israel return the captured Golan Heights, and then families such as Mr. Mustafa's may be reunited.
Syrians say that only then might they rebuild Quneitra. The small city of nearly 50,000 was captured by Israel in the 1967 war, and the population fled. Israel returned it as part of the cease-fire after the 1973 war, with nearly every one of its thousands of concrete buildings demolished. It remains a large park of flattened structures.
Israel said much of the damage was done by the Arab side in the fighting. But a United Nations investigating committee found that Israel deliberately crushed the city, and the organization condemned Israel for a "grave breach of the Geneva convention."
Israel and Syria began peace talks in October 1991 in Madrid, Spain. Last January in Geneva, Mr. Assad obliquely pledged himself to an agreement.
Progress toward that has moved at a glacial pace. But then the Palestinians and the Jordanians made pacts with Israel, leaving Syria the focus of pressure to sign a similar pact.
Ostensibly, the problem is how to come to terms over the Golan Heights. Syria wants Israel to withdraw from all of the Golan Heights, a plateau about 12 miles wide and 40 miles long that separates the two countries.
Israel wants Syria to agree first to a "full peace" of open borders, diplomatic relations, unimpeded commerce and tourism.
The problem for both sides
In reality, the problem for both leaders is how much they can give. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin faces fierce opposition over a turnover of the strategic Golan Heights, from which Syrian troops could overlook the Galilee. And Mr. Assad is loathe to open his country to the economic and democratic influences of Israel.
"I think the basic parameters of the agreement have been worked out for some time -- I'd say a year. But the devil is in the details," said a Western diplomat in Damascus.
Both sides face pressures to come to terms. Israel knows it can never live in peace in the Middle East without a pact with powerful Syria. Its best prospects for such a pact now lay with Mr. Assad, whose health has long been deteriorating.
"The Israelis want to sign quickly, and have as many years of peace with Assad as they can get," said a diplomat here.
Syria's chief motivation is to get back the Golan Heights and improve its creaky, socialist-style economy through relations with the West.
Mr. Assad was defense minister in 1967, and it has long been the mantra of his regime to get back the land he lost in the war.
"There's an incredible amount of symbolism in this for Assad. He's got to get back the Golan," said the diplomat. "Assad does not want to shake Rabin's hand. But if at the end of the day Rabin says 'No shake, no Golan,' then Assad will do it."
The U.S. Secretary of State, Warren M. Christopher, has been shuttling between the two trying to make a deal. He is scheduled to return next month, reportedly to press for a timetable in which Israel would withdraw in four years in exchange for gradual steps from Syria toward an opening.
As with the other peace deals in the region, the United States will be asked to underwrite the process -- if not with direct financial aid, at least by removing barriers to more business with Syria.
The prospect of an improved economy is cited by most Syrians as the reason to go ahead with a peace deal, even if they are unenthusiastic about Israeli merchants or tourists showing up in Damascus.
'Economic reasons only'
"The people will be with the peace, for economic reasons only," said one jobless man, who said he survives on money sent from relatives abroad. "The young people have no future," he said. "They see their uncle, an engineer, without work, or their father, a doctor, without work. They want to have an apartment and a family."
"We have been forced to allocate our resources to defense, and we know that is at a very big expense," said Rateb Shallah, head of the Damascus Chamber of Commerce. In an ornate office with a gold bust of Mr. Assad, he asserted: "We are not afraid to compete now in business."
But on the street, Syrians are skeptical.
"Peace will be just for the rich," said a merchant in the bazaar, selling ivory-inlaid boxes. "It will be like Egypt's peace: the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer."