European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called on Thursday from Gaza for a relief of the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory, ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement.

"It is World Refugee Day and I chose to be here on this day," Ashton said in remarks relayed by her office.

A U.N. human rights watchdog on Thursday accused Israel's police and military of abuses against Palestinian children ranging from torture to solitary confinement and threats of death and sexual assault in prisons.

In a report on Israel's record, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child said it expressed its "deepest concern about the reported practice of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children arrested, prosecuted and detained by the military and the police".

A Palestinian found guilty of "collaborating" with Israel has been sentenced to death by a military court in the Gaza Strip, the interior ministry of Hamas, which controls the territory, said on Thursday.

The defendant, identified only by his initials KC, was "condemned to capital punishment by hanging for collaborating with the Zionist occupier," ministry spokesman Islam Shahwan announced on Facebook.

Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah offered his resignation to president Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday, just two weeks after he took office, a high-ranking government official told Agence France Presse.

Hamdallah "presented his resignation in writing to the president following disagreements with his two deputies," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Israeli and Palestinian finance ministers were meeting on Sunday for talks aimed at resuming economic contacts suspended by Israel last year, both sides said.

The meeting between newly-appointed Palestinian minister Shukri Bishara and Israel's Yair Lapid, who took office in March, was scheduled for 3.00 pm (1200 GMT), the Palestinian finance ministry said.

The United Nations on Sunday expressed concern about the plight of Palestinian refugees in war-ravaged Syria, as it reiterated a $200-million appeal for funding to help them.

"In the past five or six months, I saw a very big deterioration for Palestinians in Syria," Commissioner General Filippo Grandi of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) told reporters in the Jordanian capital.

A Gazan man was seriously injured on Friday when he set himself on fire over a property dispute with the authorities , and his brother was hurt trying to save him, a relative said.

Ibrahim al-Tarturi, 20, "set himself on fire to protest against the seizure of his house by members of Hamas," the Islamist group that rules Gaza, the source said.

Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya denied on Friday that members of the Palestinian movement were fighting in the Syrian civil war.

He also rejected reports of internal divisions within the Sunni Muslim group over its ties with Shiite Iran and its ally, Lebanon's Hizbullah.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced Wednesday to recall an official statement on the peace process which appeared to admit Israel's settlement building was unhelpful in reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The reference was made in a joint Israeli-Polish declaration which was to have been read out following a meeting in Warsaw between Netanyahu and his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk later the same day.

Palestinian preconditions for peace talks make a return to negotiations impossible for Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

"To me the setting of preconditions is an insurmountable obstacle," Netanyahu told the foreign affairs and defense committee, a parliamentary statement said.