Damascus, Syria --
As a visitor enters Ali al-Zaher's office, a photo of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon's Shiite militant group, Hezbollah, looms prominently. A scribbled message scrawled across the picture praises al-Zaher's commitment to the struggle against Israel.
Al-Zaher, editor of the state-backed Golan newspaper, aims to remind readers of Syria's claim to the Golan Heights, a 690-square-mile plateau captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War.
After years of unsuccessful negotiations, al-Zaher and other experts say Syria has decided to ratchet up the pressure on Israel by following Hezbollah's example of expanding its political and military authority in southern Lebanon.
A political analyst in Damascus, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that Syrian leaders - emboldened by Hezbollah's surprising military strength against Israel during a monthlong war in 2006 - are increasing the nation's influence near the Golan border.
"Inspired by Hezbollah's ability to resist the Israeli advance, the government wants more people to inhabit and know the region," the analyst said. "The government saw that without popular resistance, the Israelis could easily send their tanks through the Golan on the road to Damascus" (some 30 miles from the Golan border).
While both Syria and Israel say they are ready to negotiate the territory's status, peace talks ended after a U.S.-brokered peace agreement was nearly reached in 2000. At that time, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to return most of the Golan to Syria in exchange for normalization of relations. But talks broke off after Syria insisted on returning to the entire pre-1967 war frontier, which included 328 feet where Israel would not cede control.
"A peace deal is only possible if we regain our full rights," President Bashar Assad told a Tunisian newspaper recently. "Complete rights and sovereignty on this land and nothing less."
For its part, Israel now conditions renewed dialogue on Syria severing ties with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the latter a militant group that governs the Gaza Strip and calls for the destruction of Israel.
Like many Golan natives, Mahel Awad, a 27-year-old student at Damascus University, is frustrated by the lack of negotiations.
"We support peace, but when is it going to happen?" he told a reporter in his dormitory room adorned with photos of Golan. "We are used to talk of negotiations, but at the end nothing materializes."
Today, Golan has a population of about 39,000, including 19,000 Arab Druze, 2,000 Muslims and 17,000 Jews. The territory has Israel's only ski resort, on Mount Hermon, thriving agriculture and military bases. Some say it provides as much as 30 percent of Israel's water supply. Since 1967, Israel has constructed 32 settlements, even annexing the territory in 1981 in violation of U.N. Resolution 242, which considers Golan part of Israel's occupied territories.
The sovereignty over Golan lay dormant until Syria - in a move that surprised many Middle East observers - opted to participate in the U.S-sponsored Middle East peace summit in Annapolis, Md., in November.
"By participating at Annapolis, Syria showed it wants to put Golan on the peace track," said Methat Saleh, director of the state Bureau of Golan Affairs. "With (Israeli) withdrawal, many problems in the region would be solved."
In the meantime, Syria is using the Hezbollah model in southern Lebanon to reclaim Golan.
Through its state-run Popular Commission for the Liberation of Golan, Damascus provides financial support and educational opportunities at Syrian universities for hundreds of Golanese living under Israeli control. The state requires them to return home after completing their studies to ensure territorial ties to Golan.
Last year, the government began constructing 1,000 apartments along the Golan border for an estimated 600,000 refugees. The Syrian government says the housing will face Israeli villages, with more units to come.
In January, the government began issuing Syrian national identity numbers to the 19,000 Druze residents "to strengthen ties of the Golanese people with their mother country," said Saleh. Tel Aviv has long offered the Druze citizenship, which has been accepted by nearly 2,000, according to the Israeli government.
Moreover, al-Zaher says the Golan newspaper will open bureaus in Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan this year and even launch an English edition. "The resistance media will play its role in ensuring that the young generation will not forget their Golan," he said.
To be sure, most observers in Syria and Israel say Syria does not want a war over Golan. "We have made a strategic choice for peace," said Nadim Merze, director of the Golan Research Center in Damascus.
"The Syrians are trying to follow the model set up by Hezbollah, but I do not think they are interested in any confrontation," said Eyal Zisser of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. "There is a limit to what extent a regular army can follow the tactics of a small organization like Hezbollah."
But al-Zaher says Syria is prepared for all options.
"We believe that in the end what others obtain by force we will reobtain by force," said al-Zaher. "A small group of resistance men similar to Hezbollah could achieve victory in a Golan war."
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