AMMAN (AFP) – Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas urged the United States on Sunday to push Israel for peace, saying Washington should decide if it wants peace in 2009.

“The ball is now in the U.S. administration's court. It should push Israel towards peace,” Abbas told state-run Jordan Television in an interview.
“The United States should ask itself if it wants peace in 2009, or continue in this chaotic situation ... Israel will be the biggest loser.”
Abbas was speaking after Jordan's King Abdullah II returned from a several-day visit to the United States during which he held talks with President Barack Obama on the peace process.
“Israel should accept peace, otherwise it will be responsible for the collapse of security and political situation in the Middle East,” warned Abbas, who is to meet Obama in Washington on May 28.
The Jordanian monarch on Friday urged the United States to back Palestinian statehood in “words as well as deeds,” and pressed Israel to choose between integration or isolation in the Middle East.
Israel's hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far failed to publicly endorse the creation of a Palestinian state, a principle strongly backed by the White House.
The Palestinians are demanding that Netanyahu back a two-state solution -- to which Israel committed itself under the roadmap peace plan launched by the international community in 2003 -- before the two sides resume talks.
In the interview, Abbas called for Palestinian national unity government that would approve the two-state solution.
“We want a national unity government that believes in international legitimacy and the two-state solution,” Abbas said on the eve of a new round of reconciliation talks in Cairo between his Fatah party and the Islamist Hamas.
The rival Palestinian factions are expected to discuss the formation of a unity government and its program, the reform of security apparatuses and the drafting of a new electoral law, during their three-day talks.
An agreement is vital for the reconstruction of Hamas-ruled Gaza, which was devastated by a deadly Israeli offensive in December-January.