Palestinians seek to end occupation
A draft resolution setting out a Palestinian timetable for a peace deal with Israel has been submitted to the UN Security Council.
The document, presented by Jordan, calls for a deal within one year and Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories by the end of 2017.
Jordan has indicated it will not seek a quick vote, allowing further talks and a possible bid to secure US support.
The US has vetoed previous resolutions it considers hostile to Israel.
The text of the draft says a negotiated solution should be based on several parameters including the boundary between Israel and the West Bank that existed before the 1967 Six Day War, security agreements, and "Jerusalem as the shared capital of the two states".
It urges both parties "to abstain from any unilateral and illegal actions, including settlement activities, that could undermine the viability of a two-state solution".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought reassurances that the US - Israel's ally - would block any efforts to adopt the resolution.
Earlier this week, US Secretary of State John Kerry met chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in London over the proposed timetable. Kerry said the US had made "no determinations about language, approaches, specific resolutions, any of that".
Another draft resolution, being put together by France, would call for a return to talks on a final treaty with the aim of achieving a two-state solution to the conflict within two years.
It does not mention an Israeli withdrawal, but does lay out some of the parameters of a permanent peace deal.
A previous draft of a Palestinian proposal that was circulated informally to the security council in October called for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian land by November 2016. However, the US and others found the text unacceptable.
The latest round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, shepherded by Kerry, collapsed in April amid mutual recriminations.
This summer's 50-day war in Gaza followed, and tensions have boiled over in the West Bank and east Jerusalem with a series of deadly attacks on Israelis and frequent clashes between security forces and stone-throwing Palestinians.
Frustration with the stalled peace process has also grown in Europe, where lawmakers in Britain, France and Spain have all called in recent weeks for the recognition of a Palestinian state.
The Palestinians pushed for action at the United Nations as the European parliament overwhelmingly backed recognition of a Palestinian state, the latest assembly in Europe to adopt a motion to that end.
An EU court on Wednesday ordered the removal of Hamas from its terror black list, drawing an angry response from Netanyahu.
Netanyahu on Wednesday said Europeans appeared to have learned nothing from the Holocaust, after the EU court ruling.
"But we in Israel, we've learned. We'll continue to defend our people and our state against the forces of terror and tyranny and hypocrisy," he said at the start of a meeting with US Republican Senator-elect Joni Ernst.
Comments