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The Palestinian negotiating team has resigned and will not participate in peace talks with the Israelis, a spokesman for the Palestinian mission to the United Nations told CNN Wednesday.

"The team resigned due to the Israeli illegal practices, especially settlement activities," Rabii Hantouli said in an e-mail. "There are efforts to convince them to revert."

"It is time for the international community and the Quartet members to stop treating Israel as a government above the laws of man and hold them accountable," Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erakat told Al Jazeera America. He was referring to the United Nations, Russia, United States and European Union's peace efforts.

Settlement building in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank is "the issue that will make or break the negotiations," he said. "(Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu has a choice: settlements or peace; he can't have both."

Ending the talks would be a blow to efforts by the Obama administration to get long-stalled discussions back on track.

But a senior administration official downplayed the news, saying that Erakat had issued that threat in the past, and that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas -- "the man in charge" -- has said that he is committed to the U.S.-brokered Mideast peace negotiations with Israel.

"We've seen Saeb Erakat do this before where he'd threaten to resign because he's not happy with the way talks are going but ... he ends up taking it back and continuing with the negotiations," the official told CNN. "If this ends up being a real resignation this time, which again we don't know, but if it is, we expect the negotiations will continue."

The official added, "We have to see how it plays out" but "no one is really concerned about it at this point."

The negotiators submitted their resignations to Abbas, Hanan Ashrawi told CNN in an interview in Ramallah on the West Bank.

"Reason is that they believe that there is too much pressure coming from the Americans," she said.