The United States will not violate its commitments to confidentiality by releasing the framework proposal that had been discussed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority during U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations in 2013 and 2014, David Makovsky, a former member of Secretary of State John Kerry’s team for the talks, said on Tuesday.

Makovsky, who served for ten months on Kerry’s team and is now a director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, made his statement in response to a question posed by Gilead Sher, a former Israeli peace negotiator and a researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), during the second day of INSS’s annual conference.

“Why won’t the United States lay out the parameters of the framework that you produced during those negotiations as an anchor for future negotiations,” asked Sher, adding that the framework could be discussed by the United Nations Security Council in lieu of one proposed by France or other U.N. member states.

Makovsky answered:

Your point about, ‘do you release the framework,’ I think is a fair question, but I think it’s complex. First of all, we made a commitment to these parties to confidentiality. America takes that commitment seriously, to the leaders. We don’t violate that with equanimity, you don’t see any leaked versions that have come out in the newspapers or anything like that.

Point two, I think you have an issue that there were moments … where there was more than one draft in order to elicit a response, and then the question is what draft do you release.

And the third point is, the political context has changed pretty radically, and the compromises that would be made might be less understood today than more understood.

I do believe that if we get back to these issues, that will be the starting point.

Makovsky’s answer, which begins at 9:05 in the recording embedded below, comes as the lobby group J-Street and others are continuing a months-long campaign to urge the Obama administration to release the framework as a means of pressuring Israel diplomatically.

Makovsky later added that PA President Mahmoud Abbas walked away from the talks without answering whether he would accept the administration’s framework. Israeli peace negotiator and opposition leader Tzipi Livni blamed Abbas for torpedoing the negotiations.

In an editorial published soon after Abbas walked away from the talks, The Washington Post advised Kerry against “the issuance of a detailed U.S. plan for Palestinian statehood,” which “would satisfy some partisans but lead nowhere.”

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