Former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon died in hospital near Tel Aviv Saturday after eight years in a coma, prompting a flood of tributes in Israel but contempt from Palestinians. He was 85.

"He's gone," his son Gilad told reporters at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer. "He went when he decided to go."

The wife of a Palestinian jailed in Israel gave birth in the Gaza Strip after being impregnated by sperm smuggled out of an Israeli prison, a prisoner association said on Friday.

While such births have been declared among West Bank wives of prisoners in Israel, this was the first such occasion in the besieged Gaza Strip, director of the Waed Gaza prisoner association Saber Abu Karsh told Agence France Presse.

West Bank villagers who beat up a group of Jewish settlers then locked them inside a building were on Thursday hailed by the Palestinian government as acting in "self defense."

"Citizens of Qusra village, who were subjected to numerous assaults by settlers during the past months, acted in self-defense," said government spokesman Ihab Bseiso in a statement.

Dutch pension asset manager PGGM, one of the largest in the country, said on Wednesday it was divesting from five Israeli banks because they finance Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The announcement comes a month after a major Dutch water supplier ended a partnership with an Israeli water company which supplies Israeli towns and Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Gaza's Hamas government freed seven imprisoned Fatah members Wednesday, as part of efforts to mend relations between the Islamist movement and its West Bank-based Palestinian rival, officials said.

"The release of these condemned men comes as part of the prime minister's decisions to strengthen national reconciliation," Hamas interior ministry spokesman Islam Shahwan told reporters.

A plan for 272 new homes in West Bank settlements was approved on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's departure Monday, Israel's Peace Now movement said.

Israel had been expected to announce new settlement plans alongside the release of Palestinian prisoners last week -- as it did during previous releases -- in a bid to ease the concerns of hardliners as it engages in U.S.-brokered peace talks.

Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya reached out to West Bank rivals Fatah on Monday, saying its members would be allowed back into Gaza, in efforts to promote Palestinian reconciliation.

"The (Hamas) government will allow all Fatah members who are from Gaza and who left the Strip (in 2007) to return, without any preconditions," apart from those accused of killing Hamas members during intense factional fighting that year, Haniya said.

Investigators have found 12 weapons inside the Palestinian mission in Prague where a New Year's day explosion fatally wounded its envoy, police said Sunday.

At the same time Prague police chief Martin Cervicek denied media speculation that an arsenal of more than 70 weapons had been kept at the embassy, but would not give details.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insisted Saturday he was making progress in tough talks with Israel and the Palestinians, but admitted more time was needed to agree a framework to guide the negotiations.

The top U.S. diplomat emerged from his second round of talks with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to say everyone was "working with great intensity" and commitment to try to overcome decades of animosity.

The Prague district hosting the embassy of the Palestinian Authority wants it moved after the ambassador was killed in a mysterious New Year's day explosion on the premises, local officials said Friday.

"We asked the Czech foreign ministry for the embassy to be moved out of our district," Petr Hejl, senior councilor of Prague's Suchdol district told Agence France Presse.