A senior Cairo-based Hamas official crossed Monday from Egypt into the Gaza Strip ahead of a new attempt to reconcile the militant Islamist movement and its Palestine Liberation Organisation rivals.

Mussa Abu Marzuq, head of external affairs in the movement's political office, was seen entering the Hamas-ruled coastal strip through the Rafah frontier crossing.

Palestinian negotiators have warned they may pass responsibility for their territory back to occupying power Israel if peace talks remain stalled, a senior Palestinian official said Sunday.

The official said the Palestinians told U.S. peace envoy Martin Indyk on Friday that unless Israel releases Palestinian prisoners as agreed and freezes settlement building, they could dismantle the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) of President Mahmoud Abbas.

Jordan on Wednesday urged the U.N. Security Council to end Israeli "escalation" at Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound after it was opened to Jewish visitors.

"Legal, humanitarian and ethical duties of the U.N. Security Council and the international community require that they stop Israeli escalation and violations committed by Jewish radicals at Al-Aqsa," Information Minister Mohammad Momani told the state-run Petra news agency.

An explosion in the Gaza Strip killed three Palestinians and wounded five on Wednesday, a medical official said, but the reason for the blast was unclear.

The three killed were already dead on their arrival at hospital, and all were in their 20s, Hamas' health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told Agence France Presse.

A Palestinian woman died after inhaling tear gas used by Israeli troops near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, a medical official said Tuesday, but the military denied any involvement.

The army "fired tear gas" at stone-throwing Palestinians late Monday near the home of the woman, who was "suffering from health problems," the medical official told AFP.

An Israeli was killed and two others wounded in a shooting near the southern West Bank city of Hebron on Monday, the army said.

"Fire was opened at Israeli civilian vehicles on route 35, near Hebron, and we're conducting widespread searches for the perpetrators... an Israeli civilian was killed in the attack," an army spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

Israeli police arrested five Jews suspected of trying to sacrifice a goat at Jerusalem's highly sensitive Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem Monday as the Jewish Passover holiday begins, a spokeswoman said.

The five "extreme rightwing Jews" were dragging the goat towards the flashpoint compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount when they were stopped and taken into custody, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon on Sunday approved the return of Jewish settlers to a contested house in the West Bank city of Hebron, a statement from his office said.

Israel's Supreme Court ruled last month that settlers were the lawful owners of the building in the heart of the occupied city, ending a legal dispute lasting nearly seven years.

Israel has demolished several European Union-funded humanitarian housing shelters in a highly sensitive strip of West Bank land near Jerusalem, an EU official said Friday.

"On April 9, three of some 18 residential structures were demolished... in Jabal al-Baba," an area outside the sprawling settlement of Maale Adumim, a spokesman for the EU's delegation to the Palestinian territories told Agence France Presse.

The Palestinian Authority has signed up formally to the Geneva Conventions, which set down the rules of warfare and humanitarian operations in conflict zones, the treaties' guardian Switzerland confirmed Friday.

Swiss foreign ministry spokesman Pierre-Alain Eltschinger told AFP that the Palestinian Authority had declared itself party to the conventions on April 2.