“The sewage treatment facility would have served to further entrench Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, now universally considered to be a violation of international law and United Nations resolutions,” said the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Richard Falk.

“It is encouraging that international corporations are taking corporate social responsibility seriously and weighing the legal consequences, financial costs and reputational risks of involvement in the maintenance and expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine.”

In a statement Royal HaskoningDHV, which is Holland’s largest engineering company, said that “in the course of the project, and after due consultation with various stakeholders, the company came to understand that future involvement in the project could be in violation of international law.”

Mr. Falk praised the decision as a major acknowledgement of the arguments made by legal experts and human rights activists about the corporate responsibility to respect human rights.

“The Dutch firm’s decision is part of a growing momentum against Israel’s failure to comply with international law in accordance with the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention governing belligerent occupation,” he said.

Mr. Falk also recalled the new European Union (EU) guidelines which establish that all agreements between Israel and the EU for grants, prizes and financial instruments funded by the EU must now explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.

“It is hoped that other companies engaged in business relationships with the illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine will follow Royal HaskoningDHV’s lead and terminate their involvement out of respect for corporate responsibility and international law,” Mr. Falk said.

The Special Rapporteur will present a report on corporate complicity in the Israeli settlement enterprise to the General Assembly next month. The report will set out a model for legal analysis of the specific ways in which business activities potentially implicate companies in international crimes.

Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Human Rights Council to examine and report back, in an unpaid capacity, on specific human rights themes.

Preliminary results of a joint UN survey carried out by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that 1.6 million people – or 34 per cent of households – were food insecure in 2012.

This represents a “dramatic” rise from 27 per cent in 2011, stated a joint news release from WFP and UNRWA.

Contributing factors include high unemployment rates, stagnant economic growth, the financial problems of the Palestinian Authority, the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the six-year blockade of Gaza.

WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin and UNRWA Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi today visited a Bedouin village between Jerusalem and Jericho where a food distribution carried out jointly by the two agencies was taking place.

“High food prices and low wages mean that 1.6 million Palestinians don’t know from where their next meal is coming,” said Ms. Cousin. “Yet food security is security. Food security is a vital component for sustained peace across the region.”

Ms. Cousin also welcomed a new agreement with UNRWA that will strengthen cooperation in Palestine and throughout the region and address the urgent needs of the population.

In nearby Jericho, she met shoppers using electronic vouchers from WFP to buy olive oil, salt and other groceries, most of which are produced locally in Palestine. In the past three years, WFP has injected more than $100 million into the Palestinian economy through local purchase and the redemption of electronic food vouchers. This investment supports local businesses and generates employment.

WFP reaches approximately 650,000 food-insecure, non-refugee households in Palestine. Meanwhile, UNRWA provides food assistance to more than one million food-insecure Palestine refugees across the Middle East.

During the visit to the village of Khan al Ahmar, the two officials signed a Memorandum of Understanding, in an agreement which will deepen and expand ties between their agencies.

“As well as cooperating more in the fields of food security and nutrition, we can share expertise in logistics, supply chain management and other initiatives, not just in Palestine, but regionally, particularly as we face up to the challenge of the Syria crisis,” said Mr. Grandi.

“Filippo Grandi, Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), has named 23-year-old Mohammad Assaf as the first UNRWA Regional Youth Ambassador for Palestine Refugees. This follows Mohammad winning the Arab Idol crown and reflects his personal commitment to Palestinian refugees and to UNRWA,” the UN agency said in a statement.

A diplomatic source in Beirut, where MBC’s Arab Idol is filmed, told Maan news agency the agreement was signed days ago to make Assaf the first-ever Palestinian refugee to become a UN ambassador.

The performer from the Gaza Strip which has become an audience favorite for singing about the troubles of Palestinians under Israeli occupation Accepting his appointment as Youth Ambassador, said: “I’m truly honoured to become an Ambassador for Palestine refugees. All my good memories of the UNRWA school in Khan Younis in Gaza, where I had the opportunity to study and grow, are still very fresh. Being a young refugee myself, I can understand better than anybody else the challenges and the opportunities before us. I’m committed to doing my very best to help UNRWA succeed in giving other young people like me the same chance.”

Thousands of Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza celebrated in the streets late Saturday.

The first Palestinian to win Arab Idol, Assaf was born to Palestine refugee parents in Libya. He returned to the Gaza Strip with his family at age 4 and was raised largely in the refugee camp in Khan Younis. He has described himself as a “son of Palestine” and a “son of UNRWA”: his mother is an UNRWA teacher, and he himself was educated in UNRWA schools.

Speaking in Amman at the bi-annual meeting of UNRWA’s Advisory Commission, Grandi said that more than half of the 530,000 Palestine refugees registered with UNRWA in Syria are believed to be displaced; 15% of all refugees have fled abroad, including over 60,000 to overburdened Lebanon, which already hosts hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, and over 7,000 to Jordan”. According to Grandi, “even Egypt now hosts many Palestine refugees from Syria, and some have reached Gaza”.

UNRWA has joined the United Nations’ recent appeal for fresh funds to respond to the Syria crisis for the remainder of the year. The Agency is asking donors for a total of US$ 200m for its Syria-related emergency activities.

Commenting on UNRWA’s General Fund (GF) for core services, Grandi described the current financial situation as “challenging”. “While stringent austerity measures remain in place, the projected 2013 shortfall stands at US$ 65m, and for the time being cash flow will sustain UNRWA only through October. The struggle to bridge the gap will be more intense because internal financial management has been tightened almost to breaking point”, said Grandi.

He concluded, that “the distress of Palestine refugees in Syria and displaced from Syria has given the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process an added, and very stark dimension. For refugees, this might well be another tragic turning point. They feel it very strongly. Because across the lands of their painful and protracted exile, Palestinians are connected to each other by their history, their present and their future. The loss of camps in Syria and the uncertainty that it has wrought, are suffered by all, just as the bombardments in Gaza.”

As of 5 June 2013, UNRWA has recorded 1,820 families of Palestinian refugees from Syria as being of concern to the Agency. Currently, 197 Palestinians reside in Cyber City Refugee Camp, the government-appointed facility in the Irbid governorate of Jordan.

“Neither Israel nor its proxies can justify the facts on the ground in occupied Palestine,” Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Richard Falk, said, “so they distract, distort and defame to allow the violations to go on.”

In a news release, Mr. Falk underlined that “irresponsible and dishonest smear campaigns to discredit those who document these realities do not change the facts on the ground 46 after Israel launched the war that began its occupation of Palestine.”

According to Mr. Falk, Israel is actively confiscating Palestinian water and land, having seized an additional 60,000 square meters of land near Nablus just this week.

“Israel continues to annex Palestinian territory; Israel persists in demolishing Palestinians’ homes and populating Palestine with Israeli citizens; Israel maintains a policy of collectively punishing 1.75 million Palestinians through its imposition of a blockade on the Gaza Strip; and Israel prosecutes its occupation with impunity, refusing to accept the world’s calls to respect international law,” he said.

Israel has detained approximately 750,000 Palestinians since the occupation began 46 years ago, equalling nearly 20 per cent of the entire Palestinian population, Mr. Falk said.

“At the end of May Israel had 4,979 Palestinians, including 236 children, in its prisons. Another fact is that Israel constantly holds around 200 Palestinians in so-called administrative detention, which is a euphemism Israel uses for detention without charges.”

Turning to the situation in Gaza, Mr. Falk recalled that, in mid-June, Palestinians in Gaza will enter the seventh year of living under Israel’s blockade.

“Israel’s blockade is suffocating Palestinians in Gaza, with an incredible 70 per cent of the population dependent on international aid for survival and 90 per cent of the water unfit for human consumption,” he said. “These violations deprive Palestinians of hope and make a mockery of revived peace negotiations.”

In his latest report, Mr. Falk describes the situation in Gaza during his visit in December. He is scheduled to present his findings to the UN Human Rights Council on 10 June.

Independent experts, or special rapporteurs, are appointed by the Geneva-based Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

The joint UNRWA-Bimkom report analyses the consequences of the relocation which started in 1997 in order to expand the Ma’ale Adummim settlement, which, like all settlements is illegal under international law.

The study highlights the deterioration of the social and economic conditions of the Bedouin refugees transferred to Al Jabal village. The move to one central urban location has deprived these mobile pastoralist communities of social cohesion and is destroying their social fabric and traditional economic base.

According to UNRWA Spokesperson, Chris Gunness, “the Israeli authorities are currently considering plans to create a second centralised Bedouin village in the occupied West Bank”. “However”, says Gunness “the stark conclusions of this report may lead to a reassessment of this policy”.

The rural communities targeted to be transferred to the second village reject the move, stating it will irreparably damage their social fabric and their traditional economy, as in the case of Al Jabal. If implemented, such a move may amount to individual and mass forcible transfers and forced evictions contrary to international law.

Planning NGO, BIMKOM contends that the type of urban plans developed by the Israeli authorities for Al Jabal are not an appropriate solution: “The allocation of a small parcel for each family and the connection to minimal infrastructure can lead to significant harm to human rights. An appropriate plan should take into account socio-cultural aspects, provide subsistence and development opportunities, be developed with the villagers themselves and must be acceptable to them.”

Al Jabal village is next to the largest rubbish dump in the West Bank, where 700 tonnes of waste are disposed of each day. According to recent environmental studies, there are “high levels of toxic gases, which pose an immediate health threat to residents, but also cause internal and surface combustion at the dump site leading to explosions, land subsidence, surface fires and other safety hazards. High numbers of pests thriving off the site and its surroundings include rats, packs of dogs, cockroaches and flies, all of which pose significant health threats to livestock, the young and those of less robust health.

If the plan being considered by the Israeli authorities to relocate all remaining rural refugee Bedouin communities from the Jerusalem periphery to a second location – or other sites in the future – goes forward, the number of displaced people would be four times higher than the number relocated to Al Jabal. UNRWA remains concerned that more than six decades after they were first displaced from their homes, Palestine refugees continue to face the threat of displacement and loss of livelihood.

The announcement that the settlements would be authorised was made in response to a Supreme Court petition by the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now.

On Tuesday, Israel submitted a formal response to Peace Now’s Supreme Court petition against six illegal outposts. In the response the government declares its intention to legalize four outposts, in isolated areas.

The former government had previously promised to remove the illegal construction built on private land, but had not declared its intention to legalize the outposts, according to Peace Now.

The Supreme Court will hold a hearing on the petition on Wednesday, May 22nd

As for the two remaining outposts on the petition, the Government states that most of the structures that were built on private land were removed, but does not say anything about the future of the outposts themselves.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry which is due to meet the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in attempt to revive peace talks.

“The intention to legalize outposts as new settlements is no less than a slap in the face of Secretary Kerry’s new process and is blatant reassurance to settler interests,” Peace Now said in a statement.

Negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian have been stalled since 2010, and while Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that he is ready to resume talks at any time, he has refused to meet the Palestinians’ preconditions — notably, a freeze to all settlement construction in West Bank.

With a generous donation of US$ 500,000, UNRWA will provide food to approximately 40,561 Palestinian refugees (over 10,000 families) and hygiene kits to an estimated 3,915 vulnerable adults and babies. The locations of the distribution will be in conflict-affected areas and in UNRWA facilities sheltering internally displaced Palestinian refugees.

Since March 2011, UNRWA has distributed 35,273 food parcels, over 41,000 winter items such as blankets and mattresses, 2,829 hygiene kits and cash assistance to approximately 73,076 families.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi welcoming the contribution, saying: “We are grateful to our consistent partner the UAE Red Crescent Authority for this donation. It will be of very direct benefit to Palestinian refugees caught up in the Syrian maelstrom. We calculate that about half of the more than 500,000 Palestinians in Syria have had to move from their houses. That is a frightening statistic.”

UNRWA is a United Nations agency established by the General Assembly in 1949 and is mandated to provide assistance and protection to a population of some 5 million registered Palestine refugees. Its mission is to help Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip to achieve their full potential in human development, pending a just solution to their plight. UNRWA’s services encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, and microfinance.

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is an international mathematics and science evaluation that compares the achievement of 4th and 8th grade students in 63 other countries. The evaluation allows for the collection of extensive data on the quantity and quality of teaching all over the world.

The latest study revealed that UNRWA students in the West Bank scored better than the national average scoring 430 points in maths and 451 in science as compared to their national colleagues, with the national average achievement set at 404 in maths and 420 in science.

According to UNRWA’s education department, the achievements shown in the study are the result of hard work and coordination between students, their parents, school management and teachers.

“2011 was our first foray into TIMSS. We made it a goal and priority to achieve high scores, but high scores were not our only focus”, said school principal Ali Aseedeh. “Rather, the skills that are built in the process is what made TIMSS a central tool in our teaching strategy”.

While the hard work of students is at the heart of the high scores, UNRWA teachers have gone out of their way to help their students, the UN agency says. Maths teacher Ghassan Ismail organised private tutoring sessions in his home, after school and at weekends. School administrators created special maths and science periods every day, giving a focus and attention to the exam that would facilitate the high-scoring trend. The motivation and initiative of school staff provided the students with the support they needed to realise their potential.

Officials say the majority of the group’s Shura council members voted for him.

Mashaal had previously indicated he would not seek another term, but officials told Maan news agency that Arab and Palestinian figures asked him to seek the top spot once again.

The 56-year-old has headed the political bureau of Hamas since 1996.

His re-election could revive stalled reconciliation efforts between Hamas and political rival Mahmoud Abbas, AP says.

Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in 2007, leaving Abbas with a self-rule government, the Palestinian Authority, in parts of the West Bank. Both sides have become entrenched in their territories, hampering reconciliation.

Meshaal, set foot in Gaza for the first time in December since leaving the West Bank in 1967.

Meshaal ran the group from exile in Damascus from 2004 a few months before he left the Syrian capital because of unrest in Syria and to avoid pressure from Syrian authorities to side himself with President bashar al-Assad, according to sources. He now divides his time between Qatar and Cairo.

Hamas continues with its view that it will not recognize the Jewish state officially, and it is viewed as a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and most Western governments.