Washington, November 17: The United States voiced opposition Monday to unilateral Palestinian moves to seek recognition for an independent state, saying negotiations with Israel were the best way forward.
A State Department spokesman reiterated US commitment to a future Palestinian state but poured cold water on an initiative to ask the United Nations Security Council to recognize a state unilaterally.
“We support the creation of a Palestinian state that is contiguous…. We are convinced that has to be achieved through negotiations between two parties,” said spokesman Ian Kelly.
On Sunday, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said they would “go to the UN Security Council to ask for recognition of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and with June 1967 borders.”
This in turn drew a warning from hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that: “Any unilateral action will undo the framework of past accords and lead to unilateral actions from Israel.”
Kelly said he was not aware the Palestinians had sought American support for their initiative and refused to be drawn on whether the US, if it had to, would veto any bid at the Security Council.
“I think that the thing we have to do is get the two parties to sit down and that is what we’re putting all of our efforts behind,” he said.
US Senator Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, said Washington was likely to veto such a proposal, which he said would be “a waste of time.
“I hope and presume that the United States would veto such an attempt when and if it ever came to the Security Council,” he told a press conference in occupied Jerusalem.
The move for UN recognition is the latest in a series of options the Palestinians have warned they could take if the Middle East peace process remained stalled.
Others include unilaterally declaring independence, asking the UN to determine final borders of their state, dissolving the Palestinian Authority and seeking equal rights within Israel.
The administration of US President Barack Obama has so far been unable to convince Israelis and Palestinians to resume their peace talks amid deep disagreements with Tel Aviv on the issue of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
The bid by the Palestinians for UN recognition of an independent state will have to wait until “the appropriate time,” an Arab diplomat said Monday.
The Arab League Follow-Up Committee on the Middle East peace initiative decided to launch the process during a meeting in Cairo last week, the league’s permanent observer to the United Nations Yahya Mahmassani said.
But he noted that the move for UN Security Council recognition would now have to wait for a meeting of the broader Arab League Council of Ministers at an undisclosed date.
They would then “bring to the Security Council, at the appropriate time, the establishment of a Palestinian state on the basis of the 4th of June 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that this state should be accepted as a full member of the United Nations,” Mahmassani said.
“All the actions of Israel to change the demographic and geographic status of the Palestinians on the ground are null and void and unacceptable” under such a declaration, he added.
—Agencies