The entire team of Palestinian peace negotiators has resigned to protest continued Israeli settlement building, two of them said Wednesday, but president Mahmoud Abbas has yet to accept their resignations.

Negotiator Mohammed Shtayyeh told Agence France Presse the move was in response to "increasing settlement building (by Israel) and the absence of any hope of achieving results."

The Palestine Liberation Organization is in talks with the Syrian government about ending a Palestinian refugee camp siege that has prompted tens of thousands to flee, Palestinian officials said Tuesday.

Pro-Damascus Palestinian groups have lain siege for months to pro-rebel groups inside the Yarmuk camp in the southern outskirts of Damascus, prompting the exodus of at least 135,000 of its 170,000 residents.

Belgium said Saturday it had raised the standing of a Palestinian diplomatic delegation to the country to "mission" status in a show of commitment to a two-state solution in the Middle East.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders confirmed the change from "general delegation" to "mission" after signing an agreement during a bilateral meeting with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas during a visit to Jordan.

The United States and Israel lost their UNESCO voting rights Friday after suspending funding to the organization in 2011 when Palestine was admitted, a source from the U.N. agency told AFP.

Neither the United States nor Israel "presented the necessary documentation this morning to avoid losing their right to vote," the source said on condition of anonymity.

Tests on the remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have neither confirmed nor ruled out polonium as a cause of death, but indicate a third party was involved, Swiss experts said Thursday.

"We can't say that polonium was the source of his death... nor can we rule it out," said Professor Francois Bochud of the Lausanne Institute of Applied Radiophysics, adding that the amount of polonium in Arafat's remains indicate third party involvement.

Palestinian authorities have received the reports of Swiss and Russian forensic investigations into the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, an official said Tuesday, without disclosing the findings.

"The report was delivered" by the Swiss laboratory, Tawfiq Tirawi, who heads the Palestinian investigation into Arafat's death, told Agence France Presse.

A Palestinian imprisoned by Israel on suspicion of militant activity died of cancer Tuesday, three weeks after being released, with Palestinian officials blaming Israel for his death.

But Israel rejected the accusation, saying the man had received proper care from the beginning.

The bodies of two Hamas militants killed when Israeli troops attacked a border tunnel, burying them inside, were still missing three days after the fighting, Gaza authorities said Sunday.

Four commanders of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement that rules Gaza, were killed late Thursday in clashes sparked by an Israeli raid to destroy a Hamas tunnel from the strip into Israel.

The Palestinians threatened to go to the U.N. Security Council over Israel's announcement on Sunday of tenders to build more than 1,800 settler homes in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

"The PLO is considering a mechanism to go the Security Council and the U.N. against these new Israeli decisions, especially as there are international resolutions that consider settlements illegal," senior member Wassel Abu Youssef told Agence France Presse.

The body of a Hamas militant was recovered from a tunnel in Gaza on Saturday, a security source said, amid conflicting reports of the clashes with Israeli troops in which he was killed.

"The body ... was recovered from a tunnel after digging for more than 20 meters (yards) underground near the border" with Israel, east of Khan Younis in the central Gaza Strip, the source said.