Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat has noted that the demands of some parties concerning shares in the new cabinet “have become absurd and are apt to protract the vicious state of procrastination the country is going through, amid the growing political, financial, economic and social challenges.”

In his weekly column in his party’s mouthpiece Al-Anbaa newspaper to be published Tuesday, Jumblat described the illegal construction of houses on public property as “an infringement of the State, its image and its role,” stressing that “it cannot be tolerated under any circumstances.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi on Sunday called on the United States to recognize a Palestinian state, as rival Palestinian factions prepare to sign a reconciliation accord in Cairo.

Arabi urged visiting U.S. Congressman Steve Chabot to "press Congress and the American administration to recognize a Palestinian state."

Rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah reached an "understanding" in Cairo on Wednesday to set up a transitional unity government and to hold elections, prompting a swift warning from Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who heads Fatah, "choose between peace with Israel or peace with Hamas."

Militant groups in the Gaza Strip vowed again Sunday to avenge the killing of three of their own, saying Israel would be punished for the strike.

"The occupation's crimes will not go unpunished and it will bear all consequences," said a joint statement from the military wings of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other armed Palestinian factions.

Twenty people were hurt, three of them seriously, when a bomb exploded next to a bus in Jerusalem, medics said, after Gazan militants threatened retaliation for a series of deadly Israel raids.

"The bomb was inside a bag which was left at the bus stop," Israel's Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch told reporters at the scene.

The U.S. Embassy said Monday it was "deeply concerned" by Israel's plans to build hundreds of new homes in the West Bank following a deadly attack on a settler family, calling Israeli settlements "illegitimate" and an obstacle to peacemaking.

In a rare interview to the Israeli media, the Palestinian president reached out to the Israeli public, decrying the weekend attack in the settlement of Itamar as "despicable, immoral and inhuman." But he rejected the Israeli suggestion that his government was indirectly to blame.

Envoys of the Middle East Quartet were meeting with Israel's chief peace negotiator on Thursday, as the Jewish state faced growing pressure to break the logjam in talks with the Palestinians.

Talks with Israeli envoy Yitzhak Molcho were being hosted by the U.S. embassy, with Washington represented by David Hale, assistant to U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, an embassy spokesman told Agence France Presse.

Draped in sleek evening gowns and frothy wedding dresses, the models at the West Bank's first haute couture fashion show could have been walking at Paris Fashion Week.

But the rare presentation was instead staged in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian territories, during the city's first ever bridal fair.

Britain will upgrade the status of the Palestinian delegation to London to the level of a mission in line with a number of other EU countries, Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Monday.

"Given the extent of our aid to the Palestinian Authority and our work with them, we will join many other countries in upgrading the status of the Palestinian delegation to London to the level of a mission," he told parliament.

Around 3,000 Palestinians gathered in the West Bank on Sunday to protest against the U.S. veto that nixed a Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements.

The crowd massed in Ramallah's Manara Square, a central roundabout in the West Bank city, waving banners and shouting slogans against the American administration.