Israeli troops shot and seriously wounded a Palestinian man close to the Gaza side of the border on Monday, emergency services in the Hamas-ruled territory said.

Spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told AFP the 34-year-old was shot east of Deir al-Balah in the center of the strip, without giving his name.

Israel is to allow the entry of more building materials into the Gaza Strip, the defense ministry said Sunday, and a U.N. refugee agency said they should be delivered soon.

"About 1,000 tonnes of cement and building materials will enter the Gaza Strip for storm damage restoration and other projects of U.N. agencies," the Israeli defense ministry said in a statement.

Israeli forces shot dead a man and wounded another in the Gaza Strip near the border with the Jewish state on Friday, a medical source in the Palestinian enclave said.

Bilal Samir Oweida, a 20-year-old civilian, died after being "shot in the chest by Israeli soldiers" east of Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, said Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for the Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel has arrested an al-Qaida-run militant cell in annexed east Jerusalem which was planning to bomb the U.S. embassy, a spokesman for the prime minister's office said on Wednesday.

The U.S. State Department said it had been in touch with the Israeli authorities about the alleged plot but was not able to corroborate it independently.

Two Palestinian members of Islamic Jihad were killed in an Israeli air raid in the Gaza Strip overnight, witnesses and medical sources said Wednesday.

The two victims, Ahmad al Zaaneen, 21, and Mohammed al Zaaneen, 23, died when the car they were travelling in was hit near Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, the sources said.

Israel on Sunday began transferring bodies of Palestinian militants killed by Israeli forces to the West Bank for reburial, sources on both sides said.

According to Fatma Abdallah, media coordinator for the "Palestinian national committee to return the bodies of martyrs," Israel handed over the body of Majdi Khanfar, originally from Silat al-Zaher near Jenin, via a crossing in the north of the West Bank.

Israel's premier on Sunday condemned a decision by the U.N. cultural agency to postpone an exhibit tracing 3,500 years of ties between the Jewish people and Israel, following pressure from Arab countries.

UNESCO had said on Friday it was postponing the exhibit after receiving a letter from the 22-member Arab Group which expressed concern it "could impact negatively on the peace process and current negotiations under way in the Middle East."

Israel released a prominent leader from Islamist movement Hamas on Sunday after he spent more than two years in prison, Palestinian officials said.

Hassan Youssef, who is also a member of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Legislative Council, told reporters after his release he would work with Hamas rivals "Fatah and other Palestinian factions to achieve reconciliation."

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that he wants to annex a fourth bloc of West Bank settlements, army radio reported on Sunday.

Until now, Israel has always spoken of its intention to annex three blocs of settlements in any future agreement with the Palestinians: the Etzion bloc in the south, Maaleh Adumim to the east of Jerusalem and the Ariel block in the north.

Muslim nations urged the international community Saturday to put pressure on Israel to stop building Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, as the end of talks in Morocco.

The call was issued by the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Committee amid heightened concern that the settlements undermine U.S.-brokered peace talks that resumed in July after bogging down three years earlier over the construction drive.