Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to present his first ever written proposal on the borders of a future Palestinian state at a meeting with the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) President Mahmoud Abbas scheduled before March, the Ynet news site reported Sunday.

The announcement, attributed to an unnamed Israeli official, came after a series of meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Jordan's capital Amman.

At the Amman meetings, the first between the two sides in more than 15 months, the Palestinians presented a plan to solve the border issue, and Israeli representative Yitzhak Molcho promised that Israel would study the proposals.

"If (Netanyahu) were to actually put something down, that potentially could be a major change -- depending of course on what exactly he puts down," Dr. Jonathan Rynhold of Israel's Bar-Ilan University told Xinhua on Sunday.

"It all depends on what he says and it all depends on how it's understood," he added.

Netanyahu has in the past been criticized both at home and abroad for not putting forward any cogent idea on the possible borders of an independent Palestinian state, or even offering a starting point for related negotiations.

The Palestinians demand that the 1949 cease-fire lines, which existed prior to the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors, become the borders. However, Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the idea, saying that it would leave Israel with indefensible borders.

Galia Golan, a professor of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, said that Netanyahu has been put on the spot because of a Jan. 26 deadline set for the two sides by the Middle East Quartet before the Amman talks began, and the Palestinians have already put forward their plans.

"So Netanyahu is being pressed to do something, but I find it very hard to believe that he will actually show the borders that he is interested in -- but it's entirely possible," Golan said.

TO PREVENT UN BID

The Middle East Quartet, consisting of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia, set the January deadline last year when it presented its plan to resume the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, with the proviso that the Palestinians forgo their attempts to seek a full membership at the United Nations.

Israel, the United States and the EU oppose the Palestinian statehood bid. While the United States can veto the UN Security Council resolution necessary for the Palestinians to be recognized as a full member state, analysts believe that the Americans would prefer having the bid canceled through negotiations to having to suffer a loss of prestige which the veto would carry.

Rynhold argued that one reason for Netanyahu to change his path could be that he wants to keep the Palestinians in the negotiations in order to prevent them from going back to the United Nations. As well, Netanyahu wants to stabilize the situation and keep Abbas from consolidating into a national unity government with Hamas, he said.

Israel has warned Abbas that a deal between Abbas' Fatah party and Hamas would make it impossible to reach a deal between the Palestinians and Israel. Meanwhile, Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, has also made similar warning to Abbas.

"Netanyahu will see if he can offer them enough to do that, or at least enough to say that 'it's not our fault that there are no talks -- it's the Palestinians who are being intransigent,'" Rynhold said.

MAP MAKING

Former Israeli Prime Minister and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak and another former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have offered the Palestinians a proposal that would see about 94 percent to 97 percent of the West Bank coming under the complete Palestinian control.

However, Golan, one of the founders of the left-wing NGO Peace Now, said she assumed that Netanyahu's plan would not give up more, or even be anything similar to the previous offers.

"It will include enlarged settlement blocks, (such as) Ariel and something in the Jordan Valley, but how much will be hard to tell," she said.

There are three main Israeli settlement blocks or semi-urban areas in the West Bank: the 40,000-resident city of Maale Adumim in east of Jerusalem, the Gush Etzion settlement bloc in south of Jerusalem, and Ariel in the north of the West Bank.

Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion lie close to the 1967 lines, while 18,000-resident Ariel, a predominantly secular city, is located deep within the Palestinian territories. It has been suggested that Ariel might belong to the future Palestinian state, which was hotly denied by its long-time mayor, Ron Nachman.

The Palestinians want the eastern part of Jerusalem to be their future capital, but Netanyahu has indicated that the entire city should belong to Israel. The successive Israeli governments consider Jerusalem as Israel's "eternal and undivided" capital.

The Palestinians also want the Jordan Valley, which stretches along the Jordanian border, to be part of their state. Israel, however, is reluctant to relinquish the control over the area, since such a division could allow Hamas or other Palestinian groups to bring in rockets to the West Bank, a move that would put central Israel under incessant rocket threats similar to those plaguing southern Israeli cities bordering Gaza.

Rynhold said that Netanyahu is likely to present just enough so that the Americans and the international community thinks that he has done something reasonable, but without doing too much to really bring the right wing of his coalition government down on him.

"The more generous he is, the more the chance that the Palestinians will stay in the negotiations. He'll have more coalition problems, but then it would be easy for him to bring in someone else," Rynhold said.