The Druze village of Majd el-Shams is aggressively, proudly, purely Syrian. It looks down on Israel both figuratively and literally, from the slopes of Mount Hermon, high in the Golan Heights.

In the town centre, a statue proclaims a commitment to ferocious resistance. Resistance to Israel, particularly, which has occupied Majd el-Shams since 1967. The official line here is that the Golan must return to Syria.

"It is a dream for all of us," says Tysiir Mari a Druze activist. "We're longing to be back again as part of our country. So all of us, the majority of the people would be happy again as a part of Syria."

The villagers of Majd el-Shams are in fact prosperous and they know it. There is little visible sign of occupation and they get good prices for their produce in Israel. Their children enjoy a first-world lifestyle. Deep down, the prospect of returning to Syria makes some nervous.

"I want peace," says one villager, "everybody want peace. But it's not easy to go back there after 25, 26 years here, it's not easy. And everybody know the life here it's fantastic."

If some Druze in the Golan are nervous at the prospect of a deal with Syria, the Jews of the Golan are aghast. There are 17,000 of them; settlers placed here by Israel over the years. Their villages speckle the hills around the sea of Galilee.

The van Meters came here from California in 1983. "When we said we wanted to come to the Golan, the gentleman got up from his desk and came around and hugged us," says Marla van Meters. "He said you are the kind of people we want to come to Israel, ideological Zionists ready to be real pioneers and paint the Golan green."

And they did. The van Meters raise avocados in a valley bordering Syria. Why, they say, should Israel give this land, with its farms and precious water, back to an aggressive dictator like Hafez Assad.

"You're talking about people, you're talking about businesses, you're talking about the past, you're talking about history. You're talking about wars, you're talking about governments' attitudes, you're talking about dictators, you're talking about a number of things," says Dennis van Meters.

Neighbour Yigal Kipnis agrees. There's nothing he'd like better than to continue tending his grapefruits. But he has fought in Lebanon and he thinks the Jewish settlements of the Golan will probably have to be sacrificed. "When we speak about a peace agreement with Syria, you cannot speak about self-interest. Private interest. You have to distinguish between emotion. You have to distinguish between your wishes and what is good for the state."