Two Palestinian gunmen have carried out shootings in Jerusalem before police shot and killed them, shortly before US vice president Joe Biden met prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the city, authorities said.

The bodies of four Jewish victims of the terror attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris have arrived in Israel ahead of a funeral to be attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other public figures.

World leaders have joined tens of thousands of people in a giant rally of national unity to honour the 17 victims of the Paris terror attacks.

At least four people, including the attacker, have died at a kosher grocery store in Paris where a gunman took several hostages, police officials said.

An Israeli mayor has imposed a partial ban on employing Arab workers in his city in a sign of mounting security concerns after a surge in deadly Palestinian attacks.

Islamic militant group Hamas has vowed revenge on Israel for the death of seven of its members in an airstrike early today.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and his hard-line allies have won a narrow majority in parliamentary elections, exit polls show.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said today that he is quitting politics and will not run in general elections in January.

US President Barack Obama has launched a three-day Southeast Asia tour, hailing alliances with countries such as Thailand as cornerstones of the administration’s deeper commitment to the Asia-Pacific region.

Palestinian militants barraged Israel with more than 200 rockets today, killing three people, as Israel pressed a punishing campaign of air strikes on militant targets across the Gaza Strip.

The White House has denied reports of a rift with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that he and President Barack Obama reaffirmed the two countries' commitment to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The West’s stand-off with Iran over its nuclear programme will be the hot topic when Russian President Vladimir Putin meets Israeli leaders during a 24-hour visit.

The first splits have appeared in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s expanded coalition, just a day after the Israeli leader brought the main opposition party into his government.

Barack Obama delivered his most explicit threat yet that the United States will attack Iran if that is what it takes to prevent the Islamic republic from developing a nuclear bomb.

US president Barack Obama moved to reassure Jewish party donors that he strongly supported Israel, pledging to devote all his administration’s “creative powers” to bringing about peace in the Middle East.

Three people were killed today when Israeli security forces opened fire across the Syrian frontier to disperse hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters who stormed the border on the anniversary of the Arab defeat in the 1967 Mideast war.

FORCEFULLY stepping into an explosive Middle East debate, US President Barack Obama endorsed a key Palestinian demand for the borders of its future state and prodded Israel to accept that it can never have a truly peaceful nation based on “permanent occupation”.

PALESTINIAN leaders formally ended a four-year rift between secular Fatah and the Islamist Hamas at a ceremony in Egypt, a reconciliation their people see as crucial for their drive to set up an independent state.

The Israeli military said a Palestinian has infiltrated a Jewish West Bank settlement and killed five people.

A confidential diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supporting the notion of land swaps with the Palestinians.

The UN’s special co-ordinator for Lebanon said he plans to visit Israel next week with the UN commander in southern Lebanon to discuss Israel’s decision “in principle” to pull troops out of the northern half of a village that straddles the border.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said today there will be no “quick decision” on whether to pull out of Middle East peace talks now Israel’s ban on West Bank settlement building has ended.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ended three days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders yesterday with no visible sign of progress on breaking a deadlock over building in West Bank settlements.

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton warned the Middle East that the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks may be “the last chance for a very long time” to reach an agreement.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton formally opened the first direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in nearly two years today with a plea for both sides to make compromises to forge an agreement.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top Cabinet ministers affirmed in a meeting that Israel will not accept conditions for resuming direct negotiations with the Palestinians.

THE international community must pressure Israel to go beyond easing its Gaza embargo and throw open the territory’s long-blockaded borders, the EU foreign policy chief said after a tour of the Hamas-run coastal strip.

A controversial plan to demolish 22 Palestinian homes for a tourist centre in Jerusalem’s eastern sector was approved by the mayor today.

ISRAELI naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip yesterday, killing as many as 19 people in a botched raid that provoked international outrage and a diplomatic crisis.

ISRAEL insisted yesterday it would continue construction in contested east Jerusalem, taking an uncompromising stance against US pressure following a tense visit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington.

US President Barack Obama is meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House later today, his first meeting with the Israeli leader since the recent spat over Israel’s announcement of new housing construction for east Jerusalem.

Israeli settlement building anywhere on occupied land is illegal and must be stopped, UN chief Ban Ki-Moon said today, after getting a closer look at some of the Israeli enclaves scattered across Palestinian-claimed territories.

INTERNATIONAL diplomats yesterday called on Israel and the Palestinians to return to peace negotiations with the goal of creating an independent Palestinian state within two years.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today vowed never to allow Israeli leaders or soldiers to stand trial for war crimes over their actions during last winter’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip, furiously denouncing a recent UN report in a keynote address to parliament.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he is pushing for a vote on a United Nation’s report that accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes during the Gaza war, reversing a decision that has left him at the lowest point of his presidency.

Israel’s foreign minister today said there was no chance of reaching a final accord with the Palestinians any time soon, casting doubts over the latest effort to get peace talks moving again.

President Barack Obama today insisted the United States was serious about combating global warming, telling world peers “we are determined to act”.

Hundreds of police officers scoured the streets of Tel Aviv today in a manhunt for a gunman who shot and killed two people at a youth club in the worst ever attack on homosexuals in Israel.

ISRAEL has rejected a US demand to suspend a planned housing project in east Jerusalem, threatening to complicate an unusually tense stand-off with its strongest ally over settlement construction.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is inviting the Palestinians to sit down immediately to talk peace.

PALESTINIAN officials sought US and European help to salvage foundering peacemaking yesterday after tough terms laid out by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but stopped short of refusing to resume negotiations.