As President Barack Obama prepares to lay out US policy in the Middle East in the wake of regional uprisings, the Palestinians increasingly do not believe Washington will help them, burned by its failure to secure a new settlement freeze from Israel and restart stalled peace talks.

Unwilling to rely on Washington, and unconvinced Obama's speech will contain new peace initiatives, the Palestinians are likely to ignore US opposition and press for UN recognition of a state this September

In a commentary in the New York Times on Tuesday, published two days before Obama's speech, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas warned that he was determined to seek international recognition.

"Our quest for recognition as a state should not be seen as a stunt," he wrote.

Talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been stalled since late September, when Israel's partial settlement freeze expired.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to renew the ban, despite US pressure, and the Palestinians have said they will not hold talks while settlements are being built on land they want for a future state.

On May 13, Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell announced he was stepping down after two years, which have produced little progress and seen the Palestinians turn to the international community for support.

"Neither political pressure nor promises of rewards by the United States has stopped Israel's settlement programme," Abbas wrote in the New York Times.

Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath, speaking last week to reporters, described Washington's failure to secure a new Israeli settlement freeze as devastating for the peace process and US credibility.

"When Mr. Mitchell came into the room of president Abbas... wringing his hands and saying 'Mr. president, I'm really sorry we're not able to carry out what we promised on the settlement issue, we could not even persuade Mr. Netanyahu to accept a three month moratorium on settlements'... America's credibility, the major chaperone, sponsor of the peace process, just vanished."

"If you can't get the Israelis to implement what has been agreed to, and only three months by the way, how can you guarantee that if we agree that the Israelis will withdraw from the whole West Bank, they will carry it out?"

Shaath said the Palestinians saw international recognition as a way to level the playing field in unequal negotiations.

"Negotiations have to be done between people with a minimum amount of equality and with an international intervention that guarantees that quality," he said, accusing Washington of no longer prioritising the peace process.

Abbas has said he hopes Obama's speech will lay out parameters for new talks but, among the Palestinian public, enthusiasm for a greater US role in peace talks has declined.

A March poll, taken after Washington blocked a UN Security Council resolution condemning continued Israeli settlement building, found 69 percent of Palestinians opposed a larger US role in the peace process.

Palestinians have also had the chance this year to pore through leaked documents, published by Al-Jazeera, which revealed in detail the failure of talks to achieve agreement on a negotiated solution.

Ziyad Clot, the French lawyer and former advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team who leaked the files, last week denounced the negotiations as an unevenly weighted "deceptive farce."

Writing in Le Monde and the Guardian, Clot said the leaked documents "illustrated the tragic consequences of an inequitable and destructive political process which had been based on the assumption that the Palestinians could in effect negotiate their rights and achieve self-determination while enduring the hardship of the Israeli occupation."

By gaining international recognition, the Palestinians could level the playing field, Abbas wrote on Tuesday.

"Palestine would be negotiating from the position of one United Nations member whose territory is militarily occupied by another... and not as a vanquished people ready to accept whatever terms are put in front of us."

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