U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sits with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, in Amman, Jordan, on July 16, 2013. Photo: U.S. Department of State.

JNS.org – The U.S. said on Monday that it does not support a draft statehood resolution that the Palestinians plan to introduce at the United Nations because the measure, which calls for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank by 2017, does not take Israel’s security needs into account.

“We don’t think this resolution is constructive,” U.S. State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told reporters. “We think it sets arbitrary deadlines for reaching a peace agreement and for Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank, and those are more likely to curtail useful negotiations than to bring them to a successful conclusion. … Further, we think that the resolution fails to account for Israel’s legitimate security needs, and the satisfaction of those needs, of course, integral to a sustainable settlement.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told visiting Indiana Governor Mike Pence on Monday that through the U.N. resolution, the Palestinian Authority is “seeking to impose on us a diktat that would undermine Israel’s security, put its future in peril.”