U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Wednesday announced he was returning to Israel in late May, as he pursues intensive negotiations to try to kickstart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Speaking at the start of talks with Israeli chief negotiator Tzipi Livni in Rome, Kerry said that all sides "are working through a threshold of questions" with a new "seriousness of purpose."

Palestinian health minister Hani Abdeen on Sunday paid a visit to the Hadassah hospital in west Jerusalem, the first visit by a Palestinian minister to Israel's largest medical facility, it said in a statement.

Accompanied by a delegation of senior Palestinian officials, Abdeen met Dr. Yuval Weiss, director of Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital, and distributed gifts to Palestinian patients.

Turkish and Israeli officials will meet on Monday in Israel for another round of talks over compensation for a deadly 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, a diplomatic source told Agence France Presse.

"The second round of negotiations will be held in Israel tomorrow," the source said on Sunday, without elaborating.

Egypt denied Sunday that an Arab League Middle East peace plan was amended to include land swaps between Israel and a future Palestinian state, after Qatar suggested Arab acceptance of the proposal.

Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassem had said an Arab League delegation that met U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington last month recognized the possibility of a land swap.

Denmark and Finland plan to upgrade the status of their respective Palestinian representative offices in Copenhagen and Helsinki to that of an embassy, the Danish foreign ministry said Saturday.

"It is with satisfaction that we announce our joint intention to work with the Palestinians to be able to upgrade the status of the Palestinian missions in Copenhagen and Helsinki," the foreign ministers of Finland and Denmark, Villy Soevndal and Erkki Tuomioja, said in a joint statement.

Internet giant Google has recognized the Palestinians' upgraded U.N. status, placing the name "Palestine" on its search engine instead of "Palestinian Territories," the U.S. company said on Friday, raising the ire of Israel.

The domain name www.google.ps, Google's search engine for the territories, now brings up a homepage with "Palestine" written underneath the Google logo.

Most Israelis are sceptical that the Arab League's modification of its plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will bear fruit, according to a poll published in a Tel Aviv newspaper on Friday.

Asked if they saw a revised Arab offer of full diplomatic ties in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from land occupied in 1967, with mutually agreed land swaps with the Palestinians, sparking new peace talks, 54.8 percent of respondents answered "no", the Israel Hayom freesheet said.

Israel on Tuesday welcomed a shift in the terms of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative following top-level talks in Washington, with the proposal now endorsing the idea of mutually-agreed land swaps with the Palestinians.

The principle of land swaps has been affirmed by Israel and the Palestinians in previous rounds of talks but has never formed part of the Saudi initiative.

Palestinian Christians near Bethlehem on Monday urged Pope Francis to speak up against an Israeli decision to build its controversial separation barrier on a route they say would cut off their community.

"We cry to your Holiness with a feeling of despair and urgency in order to keep alive our hope that justice and peace is still possible," said an open letter from the Christians of Beit Jala, a town near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

Dozens of Palestinians held a sit-in on Sunday in central Gaza to demand the release of their Salafist relatives, held in custody by the territory's Islamist rulers Hamas.

Participants in the protest, mainly women and children, carried banners calling for their relatives to be freed.