DAMASCUS, Syria -- Syria's newest lesson for the masses on its confrontation with Israel left young Zeinab a bit confused.
"The Golan was occupied by the Israelis and later liberated by us," the pony-tailed 9-year-old said after touring the Panorama of the October War of Liberation, a monument in marble, sound and light to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.Syria regained only a portion of the Golan Heights in 1973. Israel had captured the entire plateau in another Arab-Israeli war six years earlier, and its continued occupation of two-thirds of the Golan is at the crux of renewed efforts for peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
Peace with Syria would lead to an agreement with Lebanon, over which Syria has great control. Israel already has treaties with its other two Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, but those peaces remain chilly. A comprehensive peace could mean warmer relations, opening the way to economic cooperation, tourism, cultural exchanges -- normal life among neighbors.
In Syria, editorials in state-owned newspapers, statements on the two official television stations and patriotic songs blared over loudspeakers during national festivals constantly hammer the theme: If Israel wants peace, Syria must regain all of the Golan. The panorama on the eastern edge of its capital is the latest effort by the Syrian government to rally Golan fever.
Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations stalled in 1996. Syria says that before the talks broke off, it had received a promise from the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to return all of the Golan Heights, and it insists that any new talks begin with the Golan.
Subsequent Israeli governments have said no promise was made to return all of the Golan. While new Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak says he is committed to trading land for peace and restarting talks with Syria, he may want to retain parts of the Golan for reasons of military strategy or to hold on to water sources.
Zeinab and 100 classmates from her school in Najha, a small town just outside Damascus, trooped up stairs of Italian marble Saturday in the concrete museum built to resemble an ancient Arab fort.
The main exhibit is a painting-in-the-round on a screen 430 feet long and 50 feet high. Add lights, stirring music and narration and a revolving stand for Zeinab and her classmates, and the giant painting comes to life. Israeli jets explode overhead, men and tanks battle in the foreground during the Oct. 6-7, 1973, battle for Quneitra, capital of Golan province.
Artists sent by North Korean leader Kim Il Sung before his death in 1994 spent years researching and executing the panorama and other paintings that pay tribute to Syrian President Hafez Assad and other Arab leaders. Syria traditionally has found support in the communist bloc in its rivalry with U.S.-backed Israel.
No one will say how much it all cost.
The army major who runs the panorama refused to give his name or an interview but did let slip through a subordinate that about 600 visitors a day have filed through the museum since it opened Aug. 1, Syria's Armed Forces Day.
Such reticence is not unusual in this highly secretive country. Not that much needs to be added to the monument's blunt symbolism.
A statue of Assad, right arm raised commandingly, stands at the entrance over the motto: "martyrdom or victory." To his left sit Syrian tanks, grenade launchers, a fighter jet and a helicopter, all appearing battle-ready but for a bit of rust on the treads. To his right rest the crumpled remains of two Israeli fighter planes shot down in 1973.
"I know that the Golan is Syrian-Arab land occupied by the Israelis," said an 11-year-old who introduced himself with a sharp salute as Abdullah.
The boy's military-style tunic was emblazoned with an embroidered badge showing Assad, who has been Syria's leader since coming to power in a bloodless coup in 1970; his eldest son Basil, considered the heir to the presidency until his death in a 1994 traffic crash; and his second son Bashar, now widely believed to be in line for leadership.