The Roman Catholic Church in the Holy Land on Monday hailed the granting by UNESCO of world heritage status to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as a "diplomatic victory" for the Palestinians.

But it called on the Palestinian Authority to respect existing arrangements dividing care of the West Bank site between the Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian churches.

The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip said on Monday it has "temporarily" halted voter registration just over a month after granting the electoral commission permission to work.

The Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank is facing its "worst financial crisis" since its 1994 establishment, the Palestinian labor minister told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

Ahmed Majdalani warned that a shortfall in the delivery of aid from Arab donor nations means the PA will be unable to pay employees their July salaries or pay off debts it owes to private businesses across the West Bank.

The Palestine Liberation Organization called on Saturday for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting on Israel's policy of building Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

"The PLO executive committee has decided to call for the Security Council to convene an urgent meeting to discuss settlements," the committee said after a meeting in the West Bank political capital of Ramallah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that a decision by UNESCO to grant world heritage status to the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank city of Bethlehem proved the U.N. cultural organization was motivated by politics.

"This decision proves that UNESCO is motivated by political motives, not cultural ones," Netanyahu said in a statement.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will hold talks with Israeli vice prime minister Shaul Mofaz on Sunday, a senior Palestinian official told Voice of Palestine radio.

"President Abbas will meet with Mofaz on Sunday in Ramallah at Mofaz's request," negotiator Mohammad Eshtayeh told the official radio station Wednesday.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to help unblock long-stalled negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Putin met with Abbas during a stop in Bethlehem on a brief trip to the West Bank, a day after a stop in Israel where he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres.

Arab governments and leaders welcomed on Sunday the election of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi as Egypt's first president following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

But in Israel, which has a 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesman, Mark Regev, said his office was "not saying anything at this stage."

A leader of the ruling Hamas said Saturday the militant group had agreed to try anew an Egypt-brokered ceasefire with Israel, after six days of bloodshed in and around the Gaza Strip.

Hamas and "the Palestinian resistance factions will respect the truce as long as the (forces) of the occupation do the same and that's what we told our Egyptian brothers who demanded that we cease fire," Ayman Taha told Agence France Presse.

The armed wing of the Hamas movement which rules Gaza threatened Saturday to end a three-day-old Egyptian-brokered truce with Israel following a flurry of air strikes.

"The air raids by the Zionist enemy are new crimes. We will not stay silent in the face of the crimes," a statement from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said.