Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket which hit southern Israel on Sunday, without causing casualties, Israeli police said.

"There was one rocket that was fired into the southern region, it landed in an open area causing no damage and no injuries," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse.

U.N. agencies in the occupied West Bank said on Sunday that Israel last week destroyed 21 homes of Palestinian Bedouin refugees, making 54 people including 35 children homeless.

A joint statement from the refugee agency UNRWA and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs condemned the April 18 demolition of the structures at Khalayleh north of Jerusalem, along with the removal the same day of refugees from two houses in annexed east Jerusalem.

At least 1,350 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails are observing an open-ended hunger strike, the Israeli Prisons Service said on Sunday, after another 150 inmates began refusing food.

"There are now 1,350 Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike," said Sivan Weizman, spokeswoman for the Israel Prisons Service (IPS).

The last 10 pro-Palestinian activists who were in Israel as part of the "flytilla" campaign were on Friday deported to France, an interior ministry spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

"Ten French pro-Palestinian activists were released from the prison in which they were detained and boarded a plane bound for Paris at 1300 local time (1000 GMT)," Sabine Haddad said.

An 18-year-old Palestinian shepherd was seriously wounded by Israeli gunfire in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security sources said on Friday.

Yasser Kaabneh, 18, was tending his sheep north of Tubas in the Jordan Valley on Thursday night when he received a bullet wound to the chest, the sources said, adding the area was regularly used by the Israeli army for training.

Egyptian Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa's visit to Jerusalem caused a stir on Thursday in his own country, where normalization of ties with Israel remains a highly sensitive issue.

The powerful Muslim Brotherhood called the trip a "catastrophe" that undermined Palestinian aspirations, and Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's highest authority, was to meet to discuss the issue.

Egypt's grand mufti visited Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque on Wednesday, a senior Muslim official said, despite claims by an internationally prominent cleric that such visits are a sop to Israel.

Azzam al-Khatib said Ali Gomaa, Egypt's highest religious authority, "came for a religious visit to Al-Aqsa mosque" along with Jordan's Prince Ghazi bin Mohammed, King Abdullah II's cousin and advisor on religious issues.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday received a letter from president Mahmoud Abbas about the moribund peace process, as he met in Jerusalem with two Palestinian officials, his office said.

The brief meeting was described by the Palestinians as "serious," with both sides saying Netanyahu would reply with his own letter to Abbas "within two weeks."

Israeli authorities were on Monday holding 47 foreigners pending deportation, out of 79 barred from entering the Jewish state because of their links to a pro-Palestinian campaign, an official said.

"There are 47 people still awaiting deportation, including 37 French nationals, eight Britons, an Italian and a Canadian," immigration official Sabine Haddad told Agence France Presse.

The Israeli army said Monday it has suspended an officer who hit a foreign activist in the face with his gun, in an attack that was condemned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Lieutenant Colonel Shalom Eisner has been suspended until the conclusion of the inquiry which has been opened," a military spokesman said.