Former Israeli soldiers who served in the occupied territories say that mistreatment of Palestinian children by troops is "routine" and occurs even at times of relative calm.

A collection of over 30 testimonies published on Sunday by Breaking the Silence, a group of ex-servicemen critical of army practices, says physical violence, often arbitrary, is used against very young children.

Israel's foreign ministry on Thursday summoned South Africa's envoy to formally protest Pretoria's decision to place "Occupied Palestinian Territory" labels on goods from Jewish settlements.

Foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said ambassador Ismail Coovadia was summoned to the ministry in Jerusalem where "we made a formal protest and discussed the issue in depth."

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has called on the Middle East peacemaking Quartet to force elections on Palestinians in a bid to oust president Mahmoud Abbas and revitalize the dormant peace process.

In a letter sent on Tuesday to the Quartet's top diplomats, a copy of which was obtained by Agence France Presse, Lieberman said that Abbas "apparently is uninterested or unable... to reach an agreement which would bring an end to the conflict."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday strongly condemned a brutal hate attack on young Palestinians last week in Jerusalem, describing it as a combination of "racism and violence."

"In the state of Israel we will not tolerate racism nor the combination of racism and violence," he said in remarks relayed by his office.

Israel is a "cancerous tumor" that will soon be finished off, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday told demonstrators holding an annual protest against the existence of the Jewish state.

"The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumor. Even if one cell of them is left in one inch of (Palestinian) land, in the future this story (of Israel's existence) will repeat," he said in a speech in Tehran marking Iran's Quds Day that was broadcast on state television.

"We have carried out 800 open-heart surgeries, regulated traffic, and built 44 schools," billboards boldly proclaim in white letters on a vibrant magenta background.

Not the proud boast of a Scandinavian country, but a publicity campaign undertaken by the Gaza Strip's Hamas government, which has plastered news of its achievements at road junctions, in the across newspapers, on the Internet and even on the radio.

Israel is an artificial "outgrowth" in the Middle East that "will disappear," Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said ahead of rallies on Friday against the Jewish state and supporting the Palestinians.

The annual Quds Day marches were started in 1979 after the founding of the Islamic republic. The protests use the word Quds, derived from Arabic, to designate the city of Jerusalem.

A baby boy was born by Caesarian section on Monday, the product of a successful smuggling attempt by a Palestinian prisoner who managed to sneak out a sperm sample to his wife.

Baby Muhannad was born in a Nablus hospital to Dallal Ziben, a 32-year-old mother-of-two from a village in the northern West Bank, whose husband Ammar is currently serving 32 life sentences in an Israeli prison.

An Israeli soldier implicated in the killing of two Gaza women carrying a white flag faces a 45-day jail term under a plea bargain approved by a military court on Sunday, local media said.

The sniper, identified by Israeli media as "staff sergeant S," was charged with manslaughter in 2010 over the fatal shooting of an unnamed individual, which Palestinian witnesses linked to the killing of 64-year-old Riyeh Abu Hajaj and her daughter Majda Abu Hajaj, 37, during Israel's "Cast Lead" Gaza offensive.

The Palestinian Authority has condemned the network of smuggling tunnels between Hamas-run Gaza and Egypt as a "threat" to security and lauded Cairo's campaign to seal them.

Speaking a week after a deadly attack which killed 16 Egyptian border police in northern Sinai, Tayeb Abdelrahim, chief of staff to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, expressed full support for Egyptian moves.