Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday raised the possibility that some Jewish settlements would remain under Palestinian sovereignty if the two sides struck a peace deal.

"It is clear that some of the settlements will not be part of a (peace) deal," Netanyahu, wrapping up a visit to the United States, told Israeli television.

Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday directly urged Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and to "abandon the fantasy" of flooding Israel with refugees.

But his remarks sparked a furious reaction from the Palestinians who denounced his demand and said it had effectively put the final nail in the coffin of the U.S.-led peace talks.

An Israeli air strike on the northern Gaza Strip killed two Palestinians and wounded two others on Monday, the emergency services in the Hamas-run enclave said.

Emergency services chief Ashraf al-Qudra told Agence France Presse that Musaad Alzaneen, a man in his early 20s, was killed in the raid on farmland near the town of Beit Hanoun.

Israel needs to make some tough decisions in order to find peace with the Palestinians, U.S. President Barack Obama warned Benjamin Netanyahu in talks at the White House on Monday.

But the Israeli prime minister insisted that the Jewish state had already done its part for peace, while the Palestinians had not.

A mentally ill Gazan woman was shot dead by Israeli troops near the border early on Saturday, the Palestinian territory's Hamas-run health ministry said.

The Israeli military confirmed soldiers had opened fire after several people approached the border security fence, hitting one of them.

President Barack Obama will meet Mahmoud Abbas on March 17, stepping up Washington's efforts to convince the Palestinian leader to embrace the U.S. vision of a peace deal with Israel.

The meeting will come two weeks after Obama's planned encounter with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, which will also take place at the White House.

A senior Palestinian official on Thursday rejected US moves to extend an April deadline for nine months of hard-won talks with Israel to culminate in a framework peace deal.

"There is no meaning to prolonging the negotiation, even for one more additional hour, if Israel, represented by its current government, continues to disregard international law," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat told Agence France Presse.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel began a visit to Britain Thursday, where she will make a historic speech to parliament, hold talks on the EU and Ukraine with Prime Minister David Cameron and take tea with the queen.

The eyes of Europe will be on how the continent's most powerful politician deals with Cameron's efforts to win her support for his bid to reform the bloc ahead of a referendum on Britain's membership.

Israel has killed dozens of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank over the past three years showing a "callous disregard for human life," a report by Amnesty International said Thursday.

Israel responded by saying the London-based rights group did not take into account the increasing number of attacks on its forces in the past year or seek comment until the eve of publication.

The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Wednesday condemned as a "dangerous escalation" a debate by Israel's parliament on allowing Jewish prayer at Jerusalem's sensitive Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

OIC Secretary General Iyad Madani described the move as "a dangerous and unprecedented step that comes as part of Israel's racist policy ... aiming to Judaise Jerusalem."