Embassy of the State of Palestine

(Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry suggested on Tuesday that Israel's announcement of plans to build about 700 housing units in East Jerusalem was the proximate cause for the near collapse of its peace talks with the Palestinians.

Greek-Melchite Archbishop Cyrille Bustros sparked an interreligious firestorm when he suggested that Israel was “using Scripture” to continue its occupation of Palestinian territory.

"The Holy Scriptures cannot be used to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians,” Bustros said at the close of a two-week conference in Rome, Italy, “to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands.”

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A group of Christians from East Jerusalem on Sunday said that Israel's restrictions on Palestinian mobility resulted in violations of religious freedoms.

The statement, signed "Palestinian Christian Organizations in Occupied East Jerusalem," complained that Christians are often denied access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during the Easter holidays.

The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations has called on the world to boycott products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“You have to get ready to start adopting laws in order not to accept or allow anything that comes from settlements, because what comes from an illegal thing is illegal,” Riyad Mansour said during a meeting of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People on Tuesday.

On Tuesday 1st April, following a unanimous decision by the Palestinian leadership, including the PLO Executive Committee, President Mahmoud Abbas signed letters of accession to 15
multilateral treaties and conventions, a right which Palestine gained following its upgrade to
Observer State status by the UN General Assembly in November 2012.
These treaties and conventions will help to protect and promote basic rights of the Palestinian people and will enable the State of Palestine to be a responsible actor on the international stage.

In a final meeting for its 25th session, held on Friday, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed five resolutions on Israel; four on the conflict with Palestinians and one on the Golan Heights.

The Palestinian permanent mission in the UN introduced the four-draft resolution regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The resolutions covered self-determination for the Palestinians, human rights violations in the occupied territories, settlements and the report of the UN fact-finding mission about the conflict in the Gaza Strip.

Like other Palestinian national days, Land Day commemorations are less about the historical event as they are reminders of things happening today. Despite years of active struggles, Palestinians are finding themselves protesting the same threats to their land rights in 2014 as they were in 1976.
On this occasion Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics issued a press release showing latest statistic on Jerusalem, House Demolition, Settlement,land loss and control of Natural resources.

28 March 2014 – A senior United Nations official expressed deep concern about the ongoing displacement of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the destruction of their private property following the Israeli authorities’ recent demolition of a two-story building there, which affected a family of refugees as well as some Palestinian 15 children.
The demolished building in At Tur – which included two apartments, a mosque and a medical centre – displaced a family of seven refugees, including five children, and directly affected 24 other Palestinians, including 10 children.

“The U.S. is not exercising the political will needed to curb Israeli violations of international and humanitarian law. Unless there is an American commitment to treat Palestinians equally and to hold Israel accountable, there is no hope for peace,” concluded Dr. Ashrawi.

Members of the European Parliament's official delegation to Palestine have made this visit to strengthen our understanding of the circumstances of the Palestinian people and assess the state of the peace process between Israeli and Palestine.

As so often in the past we are disappointed, indeed outraged, to hear yet again of the injustices of Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine - of confiscations and of demolitions, of settlement building and of the exclusion of Palestinians from so much of their own land, of humiliations and of killing, with the Israeli perpetrators facing nothing by way of punishment.