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If, God forbid, Arab terrorists attack our troops, how do we guarantee that a future president will be able to resist American pressure to withdraw? And I don't trust this bloodthirsty dictator, (Syr- The unfolding battle pits supporters of the policies of the government against opponents who see the nascent proposal as a glaring weakness that they hope to exploit. ia's Hafez) Assad, to control the terrorists on his territory. Indeed, he'll sponsor terror as he has for years." The Christians' Israel Public Action Campaign (CIPAC) a group highly skeptical view of Is- raeli territorial concessions, has bolstered the preemptive attack by demanding that the Joint Chiefs of Staff perform a com- prehensive study of the merits and liabilities of any peacekeep- ing deployment to the Golan Heights. "We have seen, for various rea- sons, that surrender of the Golan could be a questionable proposi- tion," said the group's director and founder, Richard Hellman. "We have questioned whether the assumption that U.S. troops should be put on the Golan Heights as part of some peace deal, to seal an agreement be- tween Israel and Syria, is a good idea." Echoing Sen. D'Amato, Mr. Hellman argued that American peacekeepers would be inviting targets to terrorists. "As we saw with the U.S. Ma- rine barracks in Beirut, Ameri- can troops are considered fair game when they become involved in peacekeeping in that part of the world," he said. Mr. Hellman insisted that his group is not trying to foil a ter- ritorial settlement by prema- turely raising the peacekeeping issue. But he makes it clear that his group would not be disap- pointed with such an outcome. "If we look at biblical princi- ples, we see that Israel was re- turned to this land not to give it up again," he said. "And the strategic implications (of giving up the Golan Heights), which have been studied at length, would be a matter of serious con- cern. I question whether there is any underlying basis for a land- for-peace swap." Supporters of the Rabin gov- ernment worry that the growing clamor could create a political re- action that might limit the ad- ministration's efforts to bring Syria and Israel closer to a gen- uine settlement. "The opposition in Israel has always viewed Syria, and the Golan issue in particular, as the Achilles heel of the government's peace policy," said Thomas Smer- ling, executive director of Project Nishma, a groups that combines support for the peace process with a focus on Israeli security issues. According to Mr. Smerling, Mr. Rabin's American opponents have worked actively to prevent a thaw in relations between Washington and Damascus that administration officials see as an essential first step in mediating between Syria and Israel. Mr. Smerling pointed to the re- cent uproar when it was learned that the State Department was considering removing Syria from the list of nations promoting the international drug trade. "And they are raising the issue of peacekeeping troops for the same reason — to create political obstacles to a more extensive American role," he said. Jess Hordes, Washington di- rector of the Anti-Defamation League, described a "policy vac- uum" in Washington because so much is on the table in the Mid- dle East negotiations. "So the peo- ple who are stepping into this void are groups and organizations that have a very strong position, and that want to influence poli- cy rather than take the approach that it's for the Israelis to nego- tiate their deal on their own," he said. The issue of peacekeeping troops, he said "is a very vulner- able point of attack because it brings into the debate people who otherwise wouldn't have a strong position or involvement in the U.S.-Israel relationship." What we're really beginning to see in this debate is the Ameri- can Right working against the de- mocratically elected government of Israel," said Gary Rubin, ex- ecutive director of Americans for Peace Now. "This debate over peacekeepers is really a serious attempt to delegitimize the gov- ernment of Israel and its policies by seizing on the most unpopu- lar facet of a possible agree- ment." ❑