The Palestinians rejected ideas raised by visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday for security arrangements under a possible future peace accord with Israel, a Palestinian official said.

There was no immediate response from the United States or Israel, which has long insisted on keeping swathes of its West Bank settlements, as well as a military presence on the territory’s eastern boundary with Jordan, under any peace deal.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity and declined to elaborate on the proposals, said Kerry presented them to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after discussing them separately with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The Palestinian side rejected them because they would only lead to prolonging and maintaining the occupation,” the official told Reuters, referring to Israel’s hold on the West Bank, where, along with Gaza and East Jerusalem, Palestinians seek an independent state.

In remarks to reporters after his three-hour meeting with Abbas in the West Bank hub city of Ramallah, Kerry commended “his steadfast commitment to stay at the peace negotiations, despite the difficulties that he and the Palestinians have perceived in the process”.

Kerry said they had discussed “at great length issues of security in the region, security for the state of Israel, security for a future Palestine”.

“I think the interests are very similar, but there are questions of sovereignty, questions of respect and dignity which are obviously significant to the Palestinians, and for the Israelis very serious questions of security and also of longer-term issues of how we end this conflict once and for all,” he added.

Abbas did not join Kerry at the Ramallah media appearance. Kerry, who met Netanyahu earlier yesterday and returned to Jerusalem in the evening to confer again with the Israeli leader, said “some progress” had been made in the peace talks.

Acknowledging Israel’s fear that ceding the West Bank could make it vulnerable to attack, Kerry said he had offered Netanyahu “some thoughts about that particular security challenge”.

Neither he nor Netanyahu gave any further details, citing the overall need to keep the diplomacy discreet.