Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian Friday in the northern Gaza Strip near the border with the Jewish state, emergency services and the news agency of the Hamas government said.

The man's body was recovered east of Beit Hanun, the emergency services said.

Efforts to reach an Israel-Palestinian peace deal may need to be extended for another year, if parties agree on key issues by the time the current round of talks wraps up in April, the chief Palestinian negotiator said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry launched nine months of direct talks between the sides in July after a three-year stalemate, and has insisted he is aiming for a full deal and not an interim agreement by April 29.

Mideast peace efforts are being "hampered" by Israeli settlement construction, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem said Wednesday in his traditional Christmas message.

"The Israeli-Palestinian talks resumed in late July, after three years of interruption, but the efforts are hampered by the continuous building of Israeli settlements," said Fuad Twal, the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insisted Sunday concrete progress has been made in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, but said details will be kept under wraps.

Kerry, who has made nine trips to the Middle East since March and helped launch nine-month direct talks between the two sides in July, said talking about any agreements could be counterproductive.

A Palestinian from the Gaza Strip was wounded by Israeli gunfire on Saturday evening after approaching the border fence, sources on both sides said.

A Hamas health ministry official told Agence France Presse, without elaborating, that the man was hit east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza by Israeli tank fire.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived on Thursday in Ramallah for a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in yet another attempt at promoting elusive Israeli-Palestinians peace talks.

Kerry arrived at the presidential office at 1715 GMT, slightly late, as extreme weather -- including snow storms -- swept across Israel and the Palestinian territories, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Israel is scrapping a controversial draft law to relocate tens of thousands of longtime Bedouin residents of the Negev desert, an official said Thursday.

Benny Begin, tasked with implementing the so-called Prawer Plan, said he had recommended to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "end the debate on the law" in parliament.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation called on the international community to recognize the Palestinian Territories as a sovereign state "in the shortest possible time" as it closed its annual conference of foreign ministers on Wednesday.

The ministers welcomed a United Nations decision in November 2012 to elevate the territories to the status of non-member observer state in a declaration adopted at the end of the three-day meeting in the Guinean capital Conakry.

The United Nations Wednesday slammed Israel's demolition of 30 Palestinian properties in the West Bank, saying it displaced some families for the second time in less than two weeks.

"I am concerned about the destruction of Palestinian structures in the Jordan Valley yesterday (Tuesday)," U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator James Rawley said in a statement.

Egypt said Tuesday it has granted three-month residence permits to 171 out of a total of 206 Syrian and Palestinian immigrants who were detained for illegally entering the country.

Foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said the Syrians and Palestinians had entered Egyptian waters "under the pretense of being tourists, with the intention of passing through Egypt and illegally immigrating to other countries."