The Palestine Football Assocation is competing to host FIFA's annual congress in 2017.

FIFA says Palestine is among 10 members expressing interest in hosting in 2017, and 14 have proposed hosting the 2016 congress.

Iran on Sunday voiced opposition to a U.S.-mediated resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, predicting the Jewish state would never agree to withdraw from occupied Arab lands.

Tehran "along with Palestinian groups expresses its opposition to the proposed plan and it's certain that the occupying Zionist regime will utterly not agree to withdraw from the occupied lands," foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi said, quoted by Iranian media.

The Arab League said on Sunday it supported the Palestinian stance on the announcement of resumed peace talks with Israel, but that it was skeptical of Israeli intentions.

The League "is forming a political support network for the Palestinian side in case it accepts to go to the negotiations with the Israeli side," Mohammed Sabih, deputy secretary general for Palestinian affairs and occupied Arab territories, told reporters.

Israeli President Shimon Peres urged the EU on Thursday to delay stopping funding of projects involving settlements in the occupied territories as Palestinians and Israelis inch toward fresh peace talks.

"The coming days are critical," his office quoted him as saying. "Wait with your decision, give priority to peace."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Washington on Wednesday that EU moves to end dealings with Jewish settlements were harming its peace talks drive, an Israeli official said.

In a telephone call with Secretary of State John Kerry, who is in neighboring Jordan on his latest bid to revive direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Netanyahu warned that the EU was "damaging efforts to restart the talks."

A top Israeli law officer said on Wednesday that a culture of impunity reigns among Israeli bodies operating in the occupied territories, who fail to heed even their own rules.

The report was swiftly seized on by Israeli human rights groups and campaigners against expansion of the settlements as evidence of what they say is an "intolerable situation".

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will return to the Middle East this week to push for Israel-Palestinian peace talks and will meet Mahmoud Abbas, a Palestinian official said Monday.

"It is expected that (Palestinian) president Abbas and Kerry will meet in Amman," the official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Israeli police said they detained 15 Bedouin as hundreds of the tribesmen and women marched Monday in the city of Beersheba to protest a government plan to resettle them.

The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, which represents Arab communities in Israel, had called for a day of "angry strikes" including demonstrations in 15 cities to denounce the plan.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will decide how to reform the government of caretaker prime minister Rami Hamdallah in the middle of August, a senior official said on Monday.

"President Abbas will decide on the legal status of the current government on the 14th of the next month," Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Wassel Abu Yusef told Agence France Presse.

About 80,000 Muslims attended prayers at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound on the first Friday of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Israeli police said.

"There were close to 80,000 worshipers," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse.