The Palestinian president will ask donor countries for $4 billion for Gaza reconstruction after a summer war between Israel and Hamas damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes and more than 5,000 businesses, according to a report Mahmoud Abbas is to present to a pledging conference this month.

Sweden is to "recognise the state of Palestine", Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has said, the first long-term EU member country to do so. "The conflict between Israel and Palestine can only be solved with a two-state solution," he said during his inaugural address in parliament.

Opinion polls conducted by the Israeli foreign ministry in France, Germany and Britain indicate that residents of these countries hold Israel and Hamas responsible in equal measure for the death toll in Operation Protective Edge, the Israeli website Ynet reported.

The Foreign Ministry has been running a diplomatic campaign in world capitals in recent weeks to get them to cancel their travel advisories to Israel, which they issued to their citizens during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. Foreign Ministry officials fear that every day the advisories remain in effect is damaging to both tourism and investments from abroad. 

A poll conducted after Israel's latest military operation in Gaza has shown that nearly half of the respondents expected Palestinian reconciliation to fail, despite 87.6% assessing the degree of unity among Palestinian factions to be "good" during the offensive.

Israel's internal public diplomacy failed during Operation Protective Edge, deputy minister for liaison with the Knesset Ophir Akunis (Likud) charged Sunday in an interview with Israel Radio.  There has been much written about whether Israel's external public diplomacy to the foreign press succeeded during the operation. But Akunis was the first politician to allege a failure in how information about the military campaign was relayed to the Israeli public.

Media outlets in the Maldives have raised nearly $2 million to help Gaza residents affected by massive destruction caused in the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas, a fundraising organizer said Saturday. “About 10 media institutions, including on-line and print, came together to raise this money,” spokesman Ahmed Zahir said by telephone from Male, the capital of the Sunni Muslim archipelago.