Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday that Israel must choose between “peace and the continuation of settlements” if it wants new Middle East talks to succeed.

Abbas made no mention of a threat to quit the US-organised talks, but in an address to the UN General Assembly he condemned “the mentality of expansion and domination” that controls Israel’s policies.

The Palestinian leader praised US President Barack Obama’s efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians together and declared his “complete readiness to cooperate with the American efforts for the success of the political process to reach a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the region”.

The US has launched a desperate bid to head off the Palestinian threat to quit talks unless Israel extends a moratorium on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank that ends today.

“Israel must choose between peace and the continuation of settlements,” Abbas told the UN assembly.

He said Palestinians face “dangerous problems that continue to push them into the corner of violence and conflict, wasting chance after chance to seriously address the issues faced by the people of the region and to attain comprehensive and genuine solutions.

“This is the result of the mentality of expansion and domination, which still controls the ideology and policies of Israel, the occupying power.”

Abbas reaffirmed Palestinian complaints about Israeli actions in east Jerusalem and the blockade of Gaza and called for the release of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

But he added that Palestinians still want peace and declared: “Our wounded hands are still able to carry the olive branch from the rubble of the trees that the occupation uproots every day.”

Palestinian officials said that Abbas would meet Middle East envoy George Mitchell in New York after his speech.