A Palestinian official said on Friday that ideas proposed by US Secretary of State John Kerry to Palestinian Authority Chief, Mahmoud Abbas, cannot "serve as the basis for a framework accord" with the Zionist entity.

A Palestinian official said on Friday that ideas proposed by US Secretary of State John Kerry to Palestinian Authority Chief, Mahmoud Abbas, cannot "serve as the basis for a framework accord" with the Zionist entity.

“The ideas proposed cannot be accepted by the Palestinian side as the basis for a framework accord between the Palestinians and Israel as they do not take into account the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people," he told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity, after Abbas and Kerry met in Paris this week.

"The Palestinian position explained to Mr Kerry is that the proposed ideas, particularly the insistences on recognition of the state of Israel as the Jewish nation-state, are unacceptable," the official said.

Proposals for the future of Israeli-annexed east al-Quds (Jerusalem) are "vague", the official added.

Abbas, the official said, "restated the Palestinian position and his vision of a solution based on United Nations resolutions and the positions of the Palestinian leadership and the Arab League."

Kerry has spent months trying to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to agree on a framework to guide talks towards a full peace treaty, but the negotiations have shown little sign of progress.

Meanwhile, US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said on Friday that he expected Palestinian recognition of Israel's “Jewish character” to be part of that framework.
"It has always been US policy, that Israel is a Jewish state and should remain a Jewish state. That is one of the elements of the framework on which we are working," he told Israeli public radio.

"I imagine that in the framework that we are preparing now, we shall see recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, the national state of the Jewish people," he added.

"We shall need to know that this is the end of the conflict and that is one way of knowing it, that everyone in the region and the neighbors accept that there is a national state of the Jewish people here in the homeland of the Jewish people."

The US State Department described the Paris meetings on Wednesday and Thursday as "constructive", and said Kerry and Abbas had agreed to stay in touch in the coming weeks.