Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met in Rome on Monday (image from an earlier meeting). Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – The U.S. will use its veto power at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to block an upcoming Palestinian resolution that asks the UNSC to outline the territorial terms of a peace deal with Israel, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Tuesday, citing Palestinian sources familiar with the content of a meeting between Kerry and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

But when he spoke to reporters on Tuesday in London, the site of his meeting with Erekat, Kerry stopped short of assuring the U.S. veto.

“We’ve made no determinations about language, approaches, specific resolutions, any of that,” Kerry said Tuesday. “This isn’t the time to detail private conversations or speculate on a U.N. Security Council resolution that hasn’t even been tabled.”

The Palestinian-initiated U.N. resolution sets a November 2016 deadline for Israeli pullout from the West Bank, which would bring Israel’s borders back to the pre-1967 lines. Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Rome on Monday to discuss the Palestinian measure. Both Israel and the U.S. have traditionally opposed any territorial arrangement that is attained by one party to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and not through direct negotiations between the two sides.

“The American government has backed our policy for 47 years that any solution between us and the Palestinians will be done through negotiations. … I don’t see any reason that would change,” Netanyahu told reporters after his meeting with Kerry, according to Bloomberg News.