RAMALLAH, West Bank – Rebuffing international pressure to soften their positions and return to the negotiating table, Israelis and Palestinians announced separately Thursday that they were moving forward with an expected diplomatic battle next week at the United Nations.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will address the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 23, then submit a formal application to admit Palestine into the international body as a state, said his foreign minister, Riad Malki.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he also will travel to New York next week and make his own appeal to the U.N. to reject the application.

“I know Israel doesn’t get a fair hearing at the General Assembly,” Netanyahu said during a news conference in Jerusalem, repeating a frequent Israeli criticism of that body. “But I still decided to tell the truth to anyone who would like to hear it.”

The announcements were the latest signs that a last-minute push by the Obama administration and European Union to forge a compromise had faltered.

Senior U.S. diplomats Dennis Ross and David Hale returned to the region this week after a similar trip early this month. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, envoy for the Mideast “quartet” — the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — has also been meeting with Abbas and Netanyahu.

But their efforts have been unable to break through the deadlock that has stalled the latest round of peace talks for two years. Palestinians say they will return to talks only if Israel agrees to temporarily halt settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to base border negotiations on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed territory swaps. Though the United States has endorsed both steps, Israel has rejected them.

Malki said Blair’s latest proposal did not offer “anything new” and was essentially the same as one rejected a month ago.