Ramallah: Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has drafted a map of a Palestinian state in provisional borders comprising 45-50 per cent of the West Bank of the areas known as areas A and B.

Lieberman believes that the more time passes, the more people will come around the idea that the goal for now should be an interim agreement with the Palestinians.

A senior foreign ministry official told the Israeli daily Haaretz yesterday that the new Lieberman's map would essentially freeze the existing situation in the territories, with minor changes.

The official said that the map is meant to show that Israel is genuinely interested in progress towards peace and to force the Palestinians to say whether they really want a state.

The official said that Lieberman believes that this Israeli diplomatic initiative is meant to pre-empt international recognition of a Palestinian state in 1967 borders, spare Israel from increasing international pressure and pass to the Palestinians part of their state.

"When a Palestinian state is established in provisional borders, then it becomes possible to resume the negotiations, and may reach agreements on transferring additional territory to the Palestinian state," the official said.

Lieberman has shown Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the project but has not shown him the map. The official stressed that the idea of establishing a Palestinian state in provisional borders and reducing the Israeli control over the Palestinians' lives is gaining much support from the Israeli seven key ministers.

The official said that Lieberman's map includes a network of new roads linking the areas under Palestinian control. He stressed that the map provides territorial contiguity where the Palestinian state in provisional borders will be viable.

Security cooperation

Meanwhile, Lieberman has ordered his ministry to draft plans to pressure the Palestinian National Authority to stop waging diplomatic campaigns against Israel with the various institutions of the international community.

Therefore the Israeli foreign ministry started its work on a report on the steps Israel has taken to further economic and security cooperation with the Palestinians, contrasted with all the steps the PNA has taken against Israel.

The report will be completed next week and copies of this report will be sent to US State Department and both houses of congress. The PNA rejected Lieberman's map and branded it as "an invention and a joke".

Dr Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator, said, "the future tells that the Palestinian state is coming with nothing the Israelis can do about this," he said.

"The Palestinian state is coming even without negotiations with the Israelis but with the sacrifices of Palestinians," he said.

Evacuated colony

Thousands of Palestinians yesterday took out a procession which ended at a site of an evacuated colony outpost (Yash Adam) opposite the Qusrah village near Nablus enabling the village's farmers to enter their lands for the first time in decades in the presence of Israeli forces and colonists.

Qusrah has been the target of colonists who had seized the land on which the colony outpost was constructed.

The Israeli Army evacuated the illegal outpost. Gassan Doghlas, an official in charge of colony activities in Northern areas of the West Bank, said, "the real owners of the land on which the colony was constructed had not been allowed by the Israeli forces, but the demonstration enabled them to step into their lands for the first time."

"We are planting trees at the site and that such processions will be a daily activity till the real owners get their lands back," he told Gulf News.

Meanwhile, Palestinian security apparatus arrested on Sunday two colonists who tried to sneak into Joseph Tomb in Nablus to conduct their rituals in the site. Sources told Gulf News that a group of colonists have tried to sneak into the tomb site .