Embassy of the State of Palestine

TOKYO, March 25, 2014 (WAFA) - The Government of Japan condemned, in a statement on Tuesday, new Israeli settlement plans for the construction of housing units in Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

21 March 2014 – An independent United Nations human rights expert today called for an assessment by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of the legal status of Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestinian Territory.

“Special steps must be taken to ensure that the human rights of the Palestinian people are protected and the rule of law established in an occupation which has lasted now for more than 45 years,” said Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on occupied Palestine, in a press release ahead of the presentation of his final report to the UN Human Rights Council on Monday.

KUWAIT, March 23 (KUNA) -- Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Malki said here on Sunday the meeting of Arab Foreign Ministers today discussed and adopted all the draft resolutions which will be referred to the 25th Arab summit due here Tuesday.

In a meeting with a European Parliament ad-hoc delegation on Palestinian, PLO Executive Committee member, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, said, “We thank the European Parliament for sending this fact-finding mission to investigate the conditions of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, particularly the recent deaths of Palestinians in detention. It is our hope that this mission will help uphold prisoners’ rights in ways that are in line with international humanitarian law, and that prevent the further injustice and torture of Palestinian prisoners.”

PLO Executive Committee member, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, strongly condemned Israel’s latest prejudicial facts on the ground, which included the approval of 186 illegal settlement units in Occupied East Jerusalem, the killing of 15-year-old Yousef Nayif Yousef Shawamrah Abu Akar in Hebron, and the proposed Knesset legislation to extend the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law which severely limits reunification for Palestinian families

In an appeal on March 19 in "The Huff Post" Robert Turner, Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza, called on the international community not to forget Gaza. He said:
"It is impossible not to be touched by the apocalyptic scenes emerging from the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus, besieged and cut off for months. The images are at once epic and personal. Row upon row of gaunt faces, serried ranks of grimy, raged figures; the delicate, hunger-ravaged features of children waiting in line for an UNRWA food parcel; the face of a mother creased in grief for a deceased child; tears of joy as a father is reunited with a long-lost daughter; these are the vignettes of inhumanity that have become the regular fare of nightly news bulletins".

Hundreds of young Palestinians gathered outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City with books on Sunday to encourage people to read more, organisers and police said.

“We had this idea to encourage people to read, to donate books to public libraries and to build new libraries by gathering around the walls of Jerusalem, each with a book in his hands,” organiser Hossam Elayaan told AFP

According to the Minister Palestinian women have made remarkable progress in education, with high rates of enrollment in educational institutions, and illiteracy among women declining to 7 % in 2013. The percentage of female judges was 13% in 2012. A woman has been appointed as governor, and another woman as a decision-maker in the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and a woman is chairing the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, while other women are holding ministerial positions at the Ministry of Social Affairs, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Ministry of Culture and, of course, Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

A four day Evangelical conference out of Bethlehem focusing on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict kicked off on Monday, even as several Christian leaders spoke out against the event and suggested that it was a veiled attempt to dampen the Church's support for Israel.

The Bethlehem Bible College (BBC), an institution founded by Palestinian Christians in 1979 with the intent to train Arab Israeli and Palestinian pastors, has sponsored Christ at the Checkpoint (CC) bi-annually since its inaugural event in 2010, and according to its mission, seeks to challenge "evangelicals to take responsibility in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through Jesus' teaching on the Kingdom of God."

“Such an escalation in the targeting and killing of innocent Palestinian civilians is a direct result of Israel’s continuous and deliberate military occupation of Palestine, its people, land and resources. The Israeli government is undermining the credibility of the “peace” negotiations which have become a cover for Israel to buy the time needed to change facts on the ground while blatantly provoking the Palestinian leadership to withdraw from the talks.”