A Palestinian medical center said on Wednesday it had successfully carried out artificial insemination procedures by sneaking out the sperm of four Palestinians jailed by Israel.

"The successful experience of detainee Ammar Ziben encouraged other prisoners who managed to sneak out their sperm," the head of the Razan fertility clinic in Nablus, Dr. Saalem Abu al-Kheizaran, told a news conference.

Suspected Jewish extremists have torched a vehicle in a West Bank village and scrawled Hebrew graffiti on a nearby wall, Palestinians and Israelis said on Tuesday.

Another car was lightly damaged, according to the army, in the incident at Deir Jarir village, north-east of the city of Ramallah.

Israelis and Palestinians rarely demonize each other in their schoolbooks but each side's texts offer children a one-sided view of their conflict, says a joint study released on Monday.

"Dehumanizing and demonizing characterizations of the other are rare in both Israeli and Palestinian books," according to the study funded by the U.S. State Department and carried out by Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. academics.

Israeli army gunfire wounded two Palestinian teenagers near northern Gaza's border with the Jewish state on Friday, a medical official said.

"Two Palestinians, aged 16 and 17, were hit in the legs by Israeli army gunfire east of Jabaliya as they approached a security barrier" between Israel and the Gaza Strip, health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told Agence France Presse.

Gaza's Hamas rulers on Wednesday authorized the Palestinian elections commission to begin voter registration as part of efforts to restart reconciliation, an official said.

"We have agreed to start operations in the Gaza Strip and we will begin in Gaza and the West Bank," Central Elections Commission chief Hanna Nasser said, after a meeting with Gaza's Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya.

Palestinian fighter Saeed Marragha, alias Abou Moussa, died of illness Tuesday in Syria where his Fatah-Intifada group was based decades after splitting from the mainstream Fatah faction, his group said.

Abou Moussa "died at dawn at a hospital" in Damascus, succumbing to a long illness, a Fatah-Intifada spokesman said, adding the veteran military commander would be buried in Syria's capital following noon Muslim prayers on Wednesday.

Exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal said on Monday the world "must respect" Palestinian reconciliation talks, after meeting King Abdullah II in Jordan, a palace statement said.

"I am optimistic about the Palestinian reconciliation. The international community must respect Palestinian need to end division," Meshaal was quoted as saying after meeting the king in Amman.

Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki has decided to postpone a visit to Gaza until the end of March so as not to impede with Palestinian reconciliation efforts, his office announced on Sunday.

It said the delay to the visit planned for February 9 was agreed at a meeting between Marzouki and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Addis Ababa on the sidelines of an African Union summit.

Palestinian leaders will work toward peace with any Israeli government that recognizes the Palestinian state, foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said Wednesday.

But Malki told the U.N. Security Council that actions by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since U.N. members recognized the Palestinian state in November have been "the complete antithesis of the two-state solution."

A 21-year-old Palestinian woman died after being hit in the face by Israeli gunfire in the southern West Bank Wednesday, medics said, with witnesses saying she was shot by soldiers.

Lubna Hanash was killed in a shooting outside a college near al-Arrub refugee camp, some eight kilometers (five miles) north of Hebron, medics said.