They said the State Department has drafted and relayed plans to Israel and the Palestinian Authority for a timetable for security measures meant to facilitate final status negotiations on the West Bank by 2008.

Last week, the Bush administration, in wake of a scathing Israeli report, defended Olmert. An administration spokesman said the prime minister was important to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Middle East Newsline reported.

"This is a document that's an informal draft that we provided to the parties and it was intended as the basis for further discussion," State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said on May 4. "There are a flexible set of targets and they're intended to help facilitate discussion rather than be a specific plan of action for the parties."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has scheduled a May 15 visit to Israel and the PA in an effort to win agreement for the security benchmarks. Officials said Ms. Rice has been closely following the Olmert crisis to determine whether she should make the trip.

"In terms of her future travel plans, I'm not aware of any changes in her schedule," Tom Davis, another State Department spokesman, said.

"Certainly, I wouldn't want to try and predict, any particular changes in the Israeli political system either, because as you said that is an internal matter and I'll leave it to the Israelis to sort their internal politics out." Under the plan drafted by U.S. security coordinator Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, Israel would immediately remove military roadblocks in the West Bank and enable the transfer of weapons and equipment to the PA. The plan envisioned the implementation of these measures over the next 10 days.

For its part, the PA would be required to deploy troops by late June to halt Palestinian missile attacks against Israel from the Gaza Strip. The PA was also directed to prevent weapons smuggling from neighboring Egypt to the Gaza Strip.

[On Saturday, the Iranian-sponsored Islamic Jihad fired three missiles from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The missiles slammed into a house in the Israeli city of Sderot, but nobody was hurt.]

At this point, neither Israel nor the PA has formally responded to the U.S. plan. Officials said Olmert has been unable to obtain approval for the plan from Israel's military and intelligence services.

For its part, Hamas, the senior partner in the PA government, has rejected the U.S. plan while PA Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti called it dangerous. Hamas leader Khaled Masha'al said his movement would not stop missile attacks on Israel.

"I swear it's a joke," Masha'al told the Qatari-based A-Jazeera satellite channel. "The equation has now become: dismantling the checkpoints, in exchange for [ending the] resistance."

Officials said the Israeli government crisis has already affected other areas of the relationship with the United States. They said a Israel-U.S. strategic dialogue scheduled for early May was postponed by the turmoil within the Olmert government.

The Israeli delegation was to have been led by Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz. Officials said the dialogue was to have addressed a formula for future U.S. military aid to Israel. In 2007, Israel received more than $2.2 billion in military assistance.

Officials said Ms. Rice was expected to visit Israel and the PA in an effort to gauge the stability of the Israeli government. The secretary has been regarded as close to Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni, who has called for Olmert's resignation but remained in his government.

"I imagine the secretary wants a first-hand look at the political situation in Israel," an official said. "She has been gearing up to achieve significant progress on the Palestinian front in 2008, and new elections or another government in Israel would certainly slow things down."