Unknown attackers on Wednesday tried to set fire to a disused mosque in Jerusalem and scrawled anti-Arab slogans on the walls in an apparent "price tag" vengeance attack, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Slogans insulting the Prophet Mohammed and Arabs along with graffiti reading "price tag" were spray-painted on the exterior walls of the building in central Jerusalem.

Israel has approved construction of 40 homes and a farm in two new settler enclaves near the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem, Haaretz daily reported on Monday.

"Israel's military establishment has approved the establishment of a new, permanent neighborhood and a farm near the West Bank settlement of Efrat," the paper said.

A woman was injured after a rocket fired in southern Lebanon landed in a Lebanese village near the border with Israel, the National News Agency reported on Monday.

The Katyusha rocket, fired from al-Qaysiya valley in Majdal Selem, landed in the village of Houla near the border with Israel.

Leading Republican White House contender Newt Gingrich has stood by remarks that Palestinians are an "invented" people, which have sparked outrage as he seemed to call into question long-held U.S. policy on statehood.

"Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes," Gingrich said during a thorny moment in the latest debate among the Republicans vying to challenge President Barack Obama in the November 2012 election.

A Palestinian father and his daughter were wounded as their home was hit in an Israeli air raid on Gaza City early on Sunday, medics said.

They said the two were wounded in the Zeitun area of Gaza City when a missile struck, apparently targeting a neighboring building.

Jerusalem's city council has ordered the closure within a week of a wooden access ramp to the sensitive al-Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City, saying the structure was "a threat to public safety."

City engineer Shlomo Eshkol issued the order "to close the structure and not allow any use of it" in a letter sent to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation which is responsible for the upkeep of the structure, known as the Mughrabi Ramp.

Seven young Israeli women, six of them minors, have been arrested on suspicion of participating in the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian olive trees, Israeli police said on Sunday.

The women are also accused of taking part in demonstrations against the dismantling of illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank, during which Israeli army equipment was damaged, a police spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

Hundreds of Palestinian civil servants called Tuesday for the labor minister to be fired after he made disparaging remarks about government workers.

Ahmed Majdalani has been under fire after remarks he made about government workers, calling them "brothers of whores," were accidentally broadcast live on Palestinian local radio on Thursday.

Israel is considering releasing tax money it has been withholding from the Palestinian Authority in response to their bid for UNESCO membership, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

Israel on November 1 announced it was freezing the transfer of the tax and tariff funds it collects on behalf of the Palestinians after they gained full UNESCO membership despite Israeli and U.S. objections.

Masked gunmen on Friday blew up a gas pipeline which supplies Egyptian gas to Israel, the official MENA news agency reported, in the eighth such attack this year.

The saboteurs planted explosives under the pipeline, around 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of the town of el-Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula, before fleeing, witnesses said.