The Christian Science Monitor’s Howard LaFranchi is reporting that after weeks of consultations, President Bush is preparing to make a major speech outlining his plan for “Palestine”:

Although the president warned as recently as last Thursday against speculating on what he might decide, hints from US officials and leaders who have spoken with Bush suggest his plan will include concrete steps for creation of a Palestinian state.

The emphasis would be on the building of institutions to offer the Palestinian people a more democratic government, as well as other reforms to enhance security. Other points the president might include are a timetable for the steps to a peace accord, and more specifics for a summer Middle East peace conference, which Secretary of State Colin Powell announced last month but which lately has seemed to be slipping.

The possibility of establishing an interim state could be a ‘halfway house’ for the Palestinians, Cohen says, promising better things to come if other goals are met. Such a state could act as an incentive for Palestinians to take the institution-building phase seriously and to cease anti-Israeli violence.

‘If you give the Palestinians reason to hope there is light at the end of the tunnel, then there is an acceptable rationale for reform of the Palestinian Authority,’ says Charles Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and now president of the Middle East Policy Council in Washington.

Of course, the “light at the end of the tunnel” for more than half of all Palestinians is the wholesale annihilation of Israel, but don’t let a little thing that stand in the way of a lot of noble-sounding diplomacyspeak.

Some strategery, eh? In short: “The only way to fight terror is to give it its own state, and provide it with money, arms, and an international stamp of legitimacy.”

Yup. Put that on the “Re-elect Bush 2004” bumper stickers, Georgie boy…