Mofaz to present his plan: Palestinian state within year

MK Shaul Mofaz (Kadima) has scheduled a news conference for today in which he will present a plan calling for the establishment within a year of a Palestinian state with provisional boundaries on 60 percent of the West Bank.

Mofaz intends to portray his proposal as a challenge not only to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but also to his own party's leader, Tzipi Livni.

The Mofaz plan provides a centrist, pragmatic approach. He intends to initiate a debate on his plan at a meeting of the Kadima party council. From a political standpoint, Mofaz is signaling that he has no interest in returning to Likud and that he seeks to make a bid for the leadership of Kadima.

His proposal for the Palestinian state would presumably be part of his platform for that campaign.

At the same time, Mofaz is working to bring forward the date of the Kadima primaries, an effort that Livni has managed to stop for the time being. In private conversations, Mofaz has expressed confidence that the primaries will take place in about 18 months.

Kadima sources have said they are not ruling out the possibility that Mofaz views his plan as a basis upon which Kadima would join the governing coalition, and that he could force such a move on Livni.

Mofaz developed his proposal following consultations with figures in the defense establishment, the heads of think tanks and politicians. He contends that the stalemate in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is dangerous from a demographic standpoint and with respect to Israel's legitimacy in the world.

According to the Mofaz plan, in the initial stage of the establishment of a Palestinian state with provisional borders there would be no need to uproot Jewish settlers in the West Bank, but legislation would be enacted to show Israel's serious intent, providing for the subsequent relocation in the Galilee and in West Bank settlement blocs of about 70,000 residents of isolated settlements.

Mofaz has not excluded the possibility that outlying Jerusalem neighborhoods would eventually become part of the independent Palestinian state.