"What's important in the Quartet's position is that it doesn't condition the restart of negotiations on settlements on the borders," Israel's deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon told public radio, a day after the new talks proposal was announced.
"But the calendar for the application is not sacred," he added.
The peacemaking Quartet, comprised of the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia, proposed a new timetable for talks in a statement shortly after the Palestinians submitted their bid for UN membership on Friday.
Ayalon said what came next would depend on whether the Palestinians accept "a restart of negotiations without preconditions and without the threat of unilateral actions," a reference to the UN membership move.
"So long as the Palestinians don't come to the negotiating table, we can't move forward," added Ayalon, a member of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party.
Officially, Israel has said it is studying the Quartet's new proposal, but Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, a member of the Likud party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he doubted talks would restart.
"I don't really believe that negotiations will resume, even though the prime minister has done the impossible to try to achieve that," he told public radio.
Erdan said it would be "out of the question" for Netanyahu to accept the conditions the Palestinians have laid out for the resumption of negotiations -- a settlement freeze and clear parameters that use the lines that existed before the 1967 Six Day War as the basis for talks on borders.
Talks between the two sides have been on hold for nearly a year, grinding to a halt shortly after they were relaunched in Washington over the issue of settlement construction.
Israel failed to renew a part freeze on settlement building that expired shortly after the talks started, and the Palestinians say they will not hold talks while Israel builds on land they want for a Palestinian state.
The Quartet has sought to deliver a credible proposal for new peace talks in an attempt to head off the Palestinian bid for state membership at the UN.
But the offer was not announced until after Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas formally submitted the membership request on Friday, and appeared to make no reference to the Palestinians' stated preconditions for new negotiations.
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