Israeli plans to build 300 new homes in a West Bank settlement near Ramallah prove that Israel is trying to "sabotage" U.S. efforts to revive peace talks, a top Palestinian official said on Thursday.

"We condemn this new decision which is proof that the Israeli government wants to sabotage and ruin the U.S. administration's efforts to revive the peace process," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told Agence France Presse.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered a freeze on publishing tenders for new West Bank settler homes to avoid hampering U.S. efforts to renew peace talks, army radio reported on Tuesday.

He informed Housing Minister Uri Ariel about the decision several days ago, before his departure for China, the radio said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin held telephone talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Syrian conflict, the Kremlin said Monday, after Israel launched air strikes inside Syria.

Putin and Netanyahu discussed the "situation in the region and the situation around Syria," the president's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement to Russian news agencies, without giving further details. The Russian foreign ministry had earlier expressed concern over the air strikes.

Turkish and Israeli officials were meeting in Jerusalem on Monday for another round of talks over compensation for the Jewish state's deadly 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, an Israeli official told AFP.

Foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the negotiations started at midday (0900 GMT) at the ministry's Jerusalem headquarters, although they were being run by officials from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bureau.

China on Monday implicitly criticized Israel's air strikes in Syria as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Shanghai for a visit.

The raids on military sites outside Damascus a day earlier, believed to target weapons headed for Lebanon's Hizbullah, raised new fears of Syria's 26-month-long conflict spilling over into the wider region.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing on Monday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu due to follow him later this week.

Abbas's three-day trip -- the first by a Middle Eastern leader since Xi took office in March -- ends Tuesday, overlapping with a five-day visit to China by Netanyahu that begins in Shanghai on Monday and ends in the capital.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday he would put any peace deal reached with the Palestinians to a referendum, in a meeting with the Swiss foreign minister.

"If we get to a peace agreement with the Palestinians, I'd like to bring it to a referendum. And I'd like to talk to you about your experiences with that," Netanyahu told Didier Burkhalter, the premier's office said in a statement.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that an Israeli withdrawal would not bring peace with the Palestinians because the heart of the conflict was their refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

His remarks came a day after the Arab League announced moves to revive and modify its 2002 peace initiative, drawing praise from Washington and Israel's chief peace negotiator Tzipi Livni but no official response from the Israeli government.

Israel will keep refusing to negotiate on the basis of a total withdrawal from land it seized during the 1967 Six-Day War, a minister said Wednesday after the Arab League modified its peace plan.

"If Israel agrees to come to the negotiating table while accepting in advance that talks would be held on the basis of the 1967 lines, there wouldn't be very much to negotiate about," said Gilad Erdan, a minister in the security cabinet and considered close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A former Israeli defense minister has said that Syria's chemical weapons are "trickling" to Hizbullah. But Israeli officials said they did not have any evidence about the alleged transfer.

Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a retired general who is now a lawmaker from the opposition Labor party, told The Associated Press on Monday: "The process of weapon transferal to Hizbullah has begun."