The Israeli foreign minister is drawing up a plan that would establish a Palestinian state within temporary borders, a source at his ministry said on Sunday.
The plan being drafted by Israel's controversial Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is still in its preliminary stages but envisions leaving talks on the final shape of a Palestinian state for future negotiations.
The idea is one Lieberman has floated publicly before, although the Palestinians have rejected the possibility of any interim state, saying they want a comprehensive deal that will guarantee them a real nation.
The foreign ministry source had no details on the substance of Lieberman's plan, which was first reported by Israeli daily Haaretz on Sunday morning. The paper said Lieberman had drafted a map of the transitional state's boundaries but had not yet shown it to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spoken in favour of a long-term interim agreement with the Palestinians.
According to Haaretz, Lieberman's plan would give the Palestinians around 40 percent of the Israeli-occupied West Bank to form their initial fledgling state.
That could subsequently expand to up to 50 percent of the West Bank, according to Haaretz's description of the plan, which reportedly makes no mention of the Gaza Strip, ruled by the militant Islamic Hamas movement.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat dismissed the reported plan of Israel's ultra-nationalist foreign minister.
"About the new invention of Lieberman; he is busy preparing for what he calls a state with provisional borders," Erakat said on Israeli army radio, adding with a laugh, "I don't know what's happening to Israel."
"It's coming, the Palestinian state is coming," he said. "Israel cannot stop it anymore." Israeli Information Minister Yuli Edelstein, of Netanyahu's Likud party, was cautious in his response to the report, saying only that any initiative should be arrived at in talks between the two sides.
"No plan should be unilateral," he told reporters at a cabinet meeting. "Even temporary borders should only be decided in negotiations."
Direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians in September collapsed over Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank and occupied east Jerusalem. US envoys are currently meeting both sides in a bid to mediate indirect talks, but the Palestinians rule out dialogue with the Israelis while Jewish construction continues on land they want for their future state.