NEW YORK
A final draft of a UN Security Council resolution in favor of setting a deadline for Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian lands by the end of 2017 will be submitted Monday.
The final text includes amendments to the original draft filed Dec. 17 regarding issues of political prisoners, illegal settlements and the status of Jerusalem.
It sets the end of 2017 as the deadline for Israeli security forces to fully withdraw from the occupied territories.
The blueprint also names East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders.
The draft resolution could be put to a vote as soon as 24 hours after it is submitted.
Jordanian and Palestinian leadership are trying to decide vote’s timing, Jordan’s UN envoy Dina Kawar told reporters after a meeting of UN Arab delegations.
“Now we want to choose the best time to make this Security Council resolution successful,” Kawar said.
The motion requires a “yes” vote from at least nine of the 15 council members to pass, but it can be vetoed by any of the council's five permanent members, which include the U.S., a staunch ally of Israel.
The U.S. administration has said it would not support the draft. State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke on Monday, re-emphasized U.S.-opposition to the bill, saying that it “sets arbitrary deadlines” for a peace accord and Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank.
“And those are more likely to curtail useful negotiations than to bring them to a successful conclusion,” he said. “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.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threatened to sever "all forms of coordination" with Israel if the Council fails to adopt the resolution.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state in a move never recognized by the international community.
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