U.S. President Barack Obama embarks on a diplomatic marathon this week at the United Nations, touting his approach to Libya, but hoping to contain Palestinian ambitions for statehood.

Leaving behind for 48 hours domestic battles with Republican opponents and an uphill battle to see his jobs plan move through Congress, Obama will huddle with a host of world leaders on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly and speak before the chamber early Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that next week's bid by the Palestinians for U.N. membership had no chance of success and that they would ultimately seek renewed talks.

"Their attempt to be accepted as a member of the United Nations will fail," he said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. "That attempt will fail, since it has to pass through the Security Council."

Israel has become an associate member of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), opening the way for full membership in 2013, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

"The association agreement, valid for two years, was signed on Friday by the director general of CERN, Rolf Heuer, and the ambassador of Israel to the United Nations agencies in Geneva, Aharon Leshno-Yaar," spokesman Jonathan Rosenzweig told AFP.

Syrian state television broadcast on Saturday the confessions of an alleged Israeli spy who conspired to assassinate top Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh.

He confessed that Mughniyeh was murdered a day after he gave Israel his car plate number.

Turkey does not need United States' mediation to solve a long-lasting crisis with Israel over a deadly 2010 flotilla raid, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Saturday.

"We do not need mediation ... for Israel in any way," Davutoglu said during a televised press conference in the central province of Konya when asked to comment on the possibility of the U.S. helping to resolve their differences.

Several hundred Palestinian and Israeli women demonstrated on Saturday on each side of Israel's Qalandiya checkpoint, the main passage point between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Assembling nearly a week ahead of a Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations Security Council, the women all gathered under the slogan "Women want an independent Palestine".

The European Union on Saturday called for a "constructive solution" on the issue of Palestinian statehood and a resumption of negotiations with Israel.

"We continue to believe that a constructive solution that can gather as much support as possible and allows for the resumption of negotiations is the best and only way to deliver the peace and two state solution the Palestinian people want," said Jaja Cocijanic, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed Friday to lodge a bid for U.N. membership before the Security Council in one week, despite mounting Israeli and U.S. opposition.

"We are going to the Security Council," he said in a televised address to the Palestinian people from his Ramallah headquarters.

Israel's foreign ministry on Friday summoned the Egyptian ambassador after statements by Prime Minister Essam Sharaf, who said the peace treaty between the two states is "not sacred", Israeli website Ynet reported.

Foreign Ministry Director General Rafi Barak summoned Ambassador Yasser Reda to express Israel's "irritation over the recurrent calls from senior Egyptian officials over the need for modification to the peace treaty," Ynet reported.

Israeli officials fear the Palestinians may launch legal action against Jewish settlements in the West Bank if their bid for upgraded United Nations status is successful, a media report said on Friday.

The daily Haaretz reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had on Thursday told EU and U.S. envoys of his concerns about a possible Palestinian recourse to the International Criminal Court in The Hague on the settlers issue.