U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank on Tuesday, a Palestinian official said, in an effort to keep peace talks alive.

"The aim of the visit (to the town of Bethlehem) is to contain the huge crisis in peace talks, prompted by Israel's announcement in the last few days of new settlement tenders," the senior Palestinian official told Agence France Presse.

Israel arrested 10 West Bank-based members of the Islamist movement Hamas overnight, the army said Monday, although Palestinian officials put the number at 15.

"Ten Hamas operatives were detained overnight across the West Bank," an army spokeswoman told Agence France Presse, without giving any further details or reasons for the arrests.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas warned Tuesday Israel would be to blame if ongoing peace talks collapsed over its military control of a border with Jordan.

"We will not accept it, and if they (the talks) collapse, they (Israelis) will be the reason for the collapse, not us," Abbas told the Baltic News Service during a visit to Lithuania, current holder of the European Union's rotating presidency.

European Union rotating president Lithuania called Monday for Israel to stop building settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying they were impeding the peace process.

The statement followed talks between Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite and visiting Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

Lebanese officials expressed relief on Saturday over the near return of the nine Lebanese pilgrims, who were kidnapped by rebels in Syria last year.

Speaker Nabih Berri congratulated the nine men and their relatives.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday invited Pope Francis to visit the Holy Land, during an audience in the Vatican, journalists present said.

Abbas spoke to Vatican foreign affairs official Dominique Mambert after the audience, saying: "It was a pleasure and I invited him to the Holy Land".

Leaders of rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas spoke via telephone on the eve of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, stressing the need for reconciliation, a Hamas official said Tuesday.

Gaza's Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya spoke to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas of the "need for a return to national unity and an end to division" during the late night conversation, a Hamas official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Monday condemned an attack on a nine-year-old Israeli girl the day before in the West Bank.

"We oppose on principle aggression against anyone, and the spilling of blood," he told a group of Israeli MPs visiting his headquarters in Ramallah.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday demanded that any peace deal with Israel be permanent, calling new U.S.-brokered talks a "last chance."

Speaking before the U.N. General Assembly, Abbas urged international pressure to stop Israeli settlement building on Palestinian land.

U.S. President Barack Obama will hold talks with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, the White House said.

Obama is due to address the annual assembly of world leaders on Tuesday, and will also find time to meet one-on-one with Abbas, President Michel Suleiman and Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan, spokesman Ben Rhodes said.