Opposition to unilateral Palestinian moves toward statehood at the UN gained bipartisan support in Washington on Thursday, with Senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) jointly authoring a letter to Foggy Bottom urging the State Department to veto Palestinian moves in the international body that would bypass direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The letter called on Secretary of State John Kerry to “make clear to all parties that the United States strongly opposes, and if need be will veto, any effort to bypass direct negotiations and impose peace terms on Israel through the United Nations .”

The draft resolution submitted to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Wednesday included a demand for among other things a timeline for the withdrawal of Israeli security forces from areas the Palestinians intend to claim for a future state. Hours after the text of the letter was released, State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters that Washington would oppose any measures that set a specific deadline for the withdrawal of security forces and attempt to prejudge the outcome of direct talks between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

The New York Times reported that the “strict deadlines are unlikely to muster the support the resolution needs to pass,” noting that even the Palestinian ambassador to the UN had declined to press the UNSC for a vote. Institution-building failures have long plagued Palestinian efforts to achieve statehood. The Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank, has been criticized for widespread corruption and had failed to secure political legitimacy, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the tenth year of a four-year term. The PA has also failed to achieve economic stability, in addition to its failure to establish sovereignty over the territory it declares as Palestinian, with the opposing Fatah and Hamas factions in control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip respectively.

[Photo: USSenLindseyGraham / YouTube ]