New York ? As Israelis and Palestinians take faltering steps toward peace in the Mideast, Christian groups watching from the United States have taken sharply different stances on the peace plan backed by President Bush.

The majority of churches — Roman Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant and some evangelical groups — welcome the three-step plan called the “road map,” which envisions the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.

President Bush was hosting Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas on Friday to discuss the initiative, and is to meet Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

A vocal segment of evangelical Protestants, however, are lobbying the Bush administration to abandon the plan because they believe it rewards terrorism and violates God’s promise to give the Jewish people the historic land of Israel.

So-called Christian Zionists also see the modern state of Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy — and a precondition of the second coming of Jesus Christ. Setting up a Palestinian state is seen as undermining these end times events.

“Because of their apocalyptic interpretation of the Bible, they view the initiative as a betrayal,” said Randall Balmer, a religion professor at Columbia University. “They’ve threatened to derail the whole thing.”

Gary Bauer, a former Republican presidential candidate and an evangelical Christian, is spearheading a “one-state solution campaign” with a group called Americans for a Safe Israel, which is erecting billboards and distributing bumper stickers emblazoned with a verse from Genesis: “And the Lord said unto Jacob…’Unto thy offspring will I give this land.”‘

Another group, Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, last year donated $200,000 from U.S. churches to help build Jewish settlements in “Judea and Samaria” — the biblical name for the West Bank.

“Judea and Samaria were given to the Jews by God, and I cannot see the United States of America taking this land and giving it to a known terrorist,” said religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, referring to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.