WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States urged Israel and the Palestinians on Friday to resume peace talks and to focus immediately on borders and Jerusalem, suggesting this could break their deadlock over Jewish settlement building.

Speaking between meetings with the Jordanian and Egyptian foreign ministers, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a case for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to drop his demand for a total settlement freeze before resuming negotiations.

Talks were halted a year ago over the war in the Gaza Strip and have not resumed, due largely to a Palestinian demand that Israel first impose a complete freeze on building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Israel’s refusal to do so. While repeating US concerns about Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as the capital of a state, Clinton suggested the only way to deal with the issue was to get into talks.

‘’Resolving borders resolves settlements. Resolving Jerusalem resolves settlements,’’ she told reporters at a news conference with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh. ‘’We need to lift our sights and instead of ... looking down at the trees, we need to look at the forest,’’ she added.

The United States is making a fresh push to resolve the six-decade conflict, which US officials believe destabilizes the region and fuels anti-American sentiment around the world. George Mitchell, the US envoy for Middle East peace, travels to Europe next week and then to the region later in the month to see how it might be possible to restart talks.

A senior Arab official, who spoke on condition he not be named, said that going straight to the issue of borders in fresh talks was a way to circumvent the dispute over whether Israel would first freeze all settlement construction.

‘’Because we got bogged down in heavy-duty discussions that got ... nowhere with settlements over the last few months, we are at an impasse and what is needed right now is to bypass this impasse,’’ the official said. ‘’You front-load borders in order to overcome this current obstacle over settlements,’’ he added.

In November, Israel said it would limit settlement building for 10 months to try to revive peace talks but excluded areas of the West Bank it annexed to its Jerusalem municipality after the 1967 war and building projects already under way -- falling short of the full freeze demanded by the Palestinians.

US and regional officials have said the United States is looking at what assurances it might provide the Palestinians and Israelis -- possibly in the form of letters -- that might help the parties get back to the table.