Erekat: Palestinians to submit statehood bid to UN Monday

The Palestinians will seek international recognition of statehood with the United Nations Security Council on Monday, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Sunday.

Erekat told Radio Palestine that the Palestinian delegation to the UN would submit its proposal seeking the setting of a date for the end of the occupation of the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinians are carrying out a major campaign aiming to submit to the UN Security Council a draft resolution setting out a two- or three-year timetable for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines. The move is part of a series of unilateral steps by the Palestinian Authority to gain international recognition of statehood outside the framework of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Earlier this year, the Palestinians signed several international treaties, one of several actions by both sides which precipitated the collapse of American-mediated peace talks.

Jordan last month circulated a draft Palestinian text to the Security Council setting November 2016 as a deadline for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. But the text ran into opposition from the United States, which has veto power, and other countries that felt it lacked balance, diplomats said. It was never put to a vote.

It wasn’t clear what the text of the proposal the Palestinian delegation was to submit Monday contained.

France stepped in last month to try to cobble together along with Britain and Germany a resolution that would win consensus at the 15-member council.

The text would call for a return to negotiations with a view to achieving a two-state solution by which Israel and a Palestinian state would coexist.

The Palestinian negotiator and the head of PA intelligence, Majed Faraj, will meet Tuesday in Rome with US Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry is scheduled to meet Monday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

AFP contributed to this report.