Only the people of Israel can decide who will represent their best interests, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday in remarks directed at U.S. President Barack Obama a week before a general election.

"I think everyone knows that the citizens of Israel are the only ones who can decide who will faithfully represent the vital interests of the state," he said.

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu advanced a "record" number of settlements during its nearly four years in office, a report by the Peace Now watchdog said on Wednesday.

The government's actions "disclose a clear intention to use settlements to systematically undermine and render impossible a realistic, viable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," said the Israeli NGO's report.

Israeli MPs on Wednesday accused U.S. President Barack Obama of meddling in Israel's upcoming elections over an opinion piece purporting to outline his view of Benjamin Netanyahu's "self-defeating" policies.

The piece, which was published by the prominent Bloomberg columnist Jeffery Goldberg, made headlines across the Israeli press and sparked angry reactions from MPs from the Israeli prime minister's ruling rightwing Likud party.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's latest reconciliation talks with exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal are not the act of a man seeking peace with Israel.

"Abu Mazen (Abbas) gave an embrace to the head of a terror organization who only a month ago stated that Israel should be wiped from the map," a statement from Netanyahu's office quoted him as saying.

Iran's nuclear ambitions and Syria's chemical weapons are the real threats facing the world, not Israeli settlement building, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.

He made his remarks on a visit to the first Israeli university to be established in a settlement in the occupied territories, in sprawling Ariel in the West Bank.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Israel would erect a new security fence along its armistice line with Syria in order to protect the Jewish state from "infiltrations and terror."

Speaking at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu noted that a new, fortified barrier along Israel's border with Egypt, replacing an older one, was nearly complete.

Israeli former foreign minister Tzipi Livni called on Saturday for three center and center-left parties to run a joint list against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a January 22 general election.

Livni said her newly formed HaTnuah party had received positive responses from both Labor and the secular Yesh Atid party of former journalist Yair Lapid.

A slender majority of Israelis support the creation of a separate Palestinian state, but did not have high hopes for a peace deal, a survey said on Friday.

The survey by daily Israel Hayom asked more than 800 Israelis "do you support or oppose the idea of two states for two peoples, i.e. the creation of a Palestinian state independent from Israel?"

The militant Islamic Hamas could wrest the West Bank from the western-backed rule of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, just as it did in the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.

"Everyone knows that Hamas could take over the Palestinian Authority," a statement from Netanyahu's office quoted him as telling members of a Jewish bible study circle meeting at his Jerusalem residence.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned Thursday that he would disband his Palestinian Authority if there was no Israeli movement toward renewing peace talks after Israel's elections on January 22.

Abbas, in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz, said that if such a situation arose he would hand full responsibility for the occupied West Bank to the Israeli government.