Warning of Troop Plan in Golan Heights : Israel: In an interview in Costa Mesa, a West Bank settlement leader cites ‘authoritative sources’ in claim that U.S., Russian soldiers may be used to guarantee demilitarization if Israelis withdraw.

A leader of the West Bank settlement movement said Wednesday that a plan is being considered that would use U.S. and Russian troops to guarantee demilitarization of the Golan Heights after an Israeli withdrawal.

Elyakim Haetzni, a former member of the Israeli Knesset, cited “authoritative sources” in making the claim.

The 67-year-old attorney, now on a seven-day speaking tour of the United States, said in an interview that such a move could turn the strategic heights, once part of Syria, into an explosive flash point “where direct confrontation between the superpowers might occur.”

Sponsored by the lobbying group Americans for a Safe Israel, Haetzni spoke Wednesday night in Irvine and was interviewed by The Times earlier in the day.

Haetzni, who served as a member of the Jewish municipal council of Kiryat Arba, said there also were plans to forcibly remove the 400 Jews living in the adjoining city of Hebron--”to drag us out”--within the next one to three months.

The plan, Haetzni said, was part of a broader, U.S.-backed effort to lure PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat back to the peace table, after the massacre of 29 Palestinians in a Hebron mosque on Feb. 5.

“Why America should have a hand in such a foul deed I don’t know,” Haetzni said.

He predicted that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin would be jeopardized if they tried to carry out such an action.

“The day Jews are ousted forcibly from Hebron is the end of this government,” Haetzni said.

In an interview broadcast on public television Wednesday night, Rabin said he would not rule out removing the settlers from Hebron, although such a move was not contemplated “at this time.”

On PBS’ “Charlie Rose Show,” recorded earlier, Rabin noted that Hebron was populated by 100,000 Palestinians and about 400 Israelis.

“I believe the figures speak for themselves,” Rabin said.

Haetzni said he could think of few things worse than “being dragged out of Judea by an Israeli government.”

“The events in . . . Hebron were terrible and should be severely condemned,” Haetzni said, but it was “unconscionable” for Rabin to allow Arafat “to use the incident as an excuse for reopening the agreement previously made.”

A secular Jew who was severely wounded during the siege of Jerusalem in 1948, Haetzni serves on the Council of Jewish Settlements for Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the umbrella organization that opposes the Mideast peace plan announced Sept. 13.

Haetzni said he and his organization unconditionally reject the peace plan.

If, as some Israeli critics have demanded, the current plan is put to a national referendum and passes, it would be “no more acceptable” to him, Haetzni said.

Presented with any other peace plan that guaranteed “no terror and real peace”--in exchange for abandoning some of the smaller Jewish settlements on the West Bank--Haetzni said most Israeli voters “would sell us out.”