Efforts by the Palestinian Authority to circumvent peace talks with Israel for statehood are not constructive, the United States said on Monday, rejecting new Palestinian moves at the United Nations.
A revised proposal from the PA fails to address Israel's security needs, the State Department said.
"We don't think this resolution is constructive," State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told a 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.
"The resolution fails to account for Israel's legitimate security needs, and the satisfaction of those needs, of course, integral to a sustainable settlement," he continued.
As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the US must favor any resolution for it to proceed. The Obama administration says it is open to a resolution from the PA that does not include unilateral moves imposed on Israel.
Jordan was scheduled on Monday to submit to the Security Council – on behalf of the Arab League - a revised Palestinian resolution that calls for a timeline for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.
The resolution will be translated to five languages before it is brought for a vote before the Security Council.
However, it remained unclear on Monday night whether the Palestinians had secured the nine votes required to pass the resolution.
A Palestinian official in Ramallah admitted that only six or seven Security Council members have promised to vote in favor of the resolution. He said that the countries that were expected to support the statehood bid include China, Jordan, Russia, Chad, Nigeria and Argentina.
Upon receiving copies of the resolution, the Security Council members will hold consultations with their governments ahead of the vote, which is expected to take place on Tuesday or Wednesday, according to Palestinian sources.
Other sources said that the vote might be delayed for several weeks or months.
The revised resolution, according to the sources, includes eight amendments.
They said that the previous draft resolution, which was made public last week, has been changed to emphasize that settlements are illegitimate, that east Jerusalem is the capital of a Palestinian state (instead of a “shared capital”) and a clear reference to UN resolution 194 regarding the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees.
The revised resolution also mentions Palestinian prisoners in Israel and the International Criminal Court’s 2009 Advisory Opinion on the security fence in the West Bank – two issues that did not appear in the original draft resolution.
Earlier, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that the Palestinians would study their future actions regardless of the result of the vote in the Security Council.
He said it would take 24 hours to translate the resolution into English. Afterwards, he added, the Security Council members would be asked to vote on the resolution.
Abbas, who was speaking during a meeting of Fatah leaders in Ramallah, said that the Palestinians would study their future actions regardless of the result of the vote.
“No matter what the result of the vote is, we will study it,” Abbas added. “We have steps to carry out that were agreed upon in the past by the Palestinian leadership.”
Abbas did not specify what steps the Palestinians would take. However, he and other senior Palestinian officials have stated in the past that the Palestinians would join several international organizations and treaties if the Palestinian statehood bid fails.
Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, said that the PA president briefed the Fatah leaders on the latest developments surrounding the statehood bid at the Security Council.
Abu Rudaineh said that a revised resolution would be presented to the Security Council to seek an “end to Israeli occupation in all its forms.”
The original draft resolution, which was presented to the Security Council last week, has drawn sharp criticism from many Palestinian factions. Opponents claim that the previous draft resolution does not meet the aspirations of the Palestinians and compromises Palestinian rights.

By MICHAEL WILNER, KHALED ABU TOAMEH