Most Palestinians believe the renewal of peace talks with Israel was a mistake and over two thirds think the negotiations will fail, according to a poll released Wednesday.

Just over half the respondents -- 50.5 percent -- said the decision by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to resume U.S.-brokered peace talks with Israel in late July was a mistake, while 33.8 percent said it was the right decision, according to the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center (JMCC) survey.

Israeli security forces killed three Palestinian militants late Tuesday after attempting to arrest them near the West Bank city of Hebron, the Shin Bet internal security service and army said.

Shin Bet said in a statement it had along with special police forces killed "two members of a Salafist jihadist network that was active in the area and planned an attack" after an attempt to detain them.

Israeli soldiers opened fire on demonstrators in the West Bank north of Ramallah on Saturday, wounding four of them, Palestinian medical sources said.

The shooting happened near a refugee camp at Jalazon during a protest against stone-throwing attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian vehicles, the sources said.

A granddaughter of Gaza's Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya has been hospitalized in Israel in critical condition, Palestinian sources said Monday.

Amal Haniya, aged one, suffers from a serious infection of the digestive tract which has affected her nervous system, according to Gaza medical sources.

French President Francois Hollande on Monday called for a complete halt to Israel's settlement activities on land the Palestinians want for a future state.

"France demands a full and complete halt to settlement activity," he said at a joint news conference in Ramallah with his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas.

France expects Israel to make "gestures" over its construction of settlements on land the Palestinians want for a future state, President Francois Hollande said in Jerusalem on Sunday.

His remarks came just three days after the entire Palestinian negotiating team resigned in protest over continued Israeli settlement building which is threatening to sabotage the U.S.-backed direct peace talks which began in late July.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted Sunday that the peace process with the Palestinians was not "frozen," but said he was waiting for Palestinian concessions to move the talks forward.

"They're not frozen. We're talking," the Israeli leader said on CNN's "State of the Union" program.

The Gaza Strip's Hamas prime minister on Saturday ordered the reopening of a Palestinian news agency closed in July for alleged "false" reporting of Hamas aid to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

"Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh ordered reopening Maan (agency) from tomorrow morning," government spokesman Ihab al-Hussein told AFP.

Israeli troops in the West Bank detained four Palestinian children aged five to nine years for more than an hour Friday with their hands cuffed, Palestinian witnesses said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said that troops rounded up some minors during rioting in the northern West bank village of Kfar Qaddum but held them only briefly.

The Israeli government has accelerated a project for a national park between two Palestinian villages near annexed east Jerusalem to stop Palestinians building in the area, Israeli daily Haaretz reported Thursday.

The project, which authorities say is aimed at preserving the environment on the slopes of Mount Scopus, was announced at the end of October along with the construction of a further 1,500 homes in the east Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo.