Gunfire from Syria hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Thursday morning, the Israeli military said, in the latest spillover of violence from the bloody civil war raging across the ceasefire line.

"Stray bullets fired in Syria reached Israel. No soldiers were injured by the gunfire," a spokeswoman said.

Gaza militants on Monday fired 11 rockets at southern Israel, one of which exploded next to a house, police said, shattering an overnight calm even as Cairo sought to broker an end to 24 hours of bloodshed.

As sirens sounded across the south, Israel's top brass was examining how to put a decisive end to the latest spike in bloodshed, the second such flareup in and around Gaza in three weeks.

Israeli troops fired warning shots into Syria Sunday, the army said in a statement, in what public radio said was the first Israeli fire directed at the military in the Golan Heights area since the 1973 war.

"A short while ago, a mortar shell hit an IDF post in the Golan Heights adjacent to the Israel-Syria border, as part of the internal conflict inside Syria. In response, IDF soldiers fired warning shots towards Syrian areas," the army said in a statement.

Israel is "prepared to escalate" its response to a flare-up of violence along its border with the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Sunday.

"The world must realize that Israel won't sit by idly in the face of attempts to attack us. We are prepared to escalate our actions," he said at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday congratulated U.S. President Barack Obama on his re-election, saying ties between their two countries were "stronger than ever."

"The prime minister congratulates the president of the United States for his victory in the election," Netanyahu said in a statement. "The strategic alliance between Israel and the United States is stronger than ever."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said his country is ready to strike Iran's nuclear sites "if necessary."

An Israeli TV network said Sunday that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in 2010 ordered the army to prepare an attack against Iranian nuclear installations, though the order was later rescinded.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in 2010 ordered the army to prepare an attack against Iranian nuclear installations, though the order was later rescinded, Israeli television said Sunday.

According to private television Channel 2, the order was not implemented due to opposition from the army chief at the time, General Gabi Ashkenazi, and from then Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

An electoral pact between the parties of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his foreign minister, designed to strengthen them both in January's general election, could have the opposite effect, according to polls published on Friday.

A survey by Smith Research for the Jerusalem Post indicated that if the election were held now, the rightwing alliance of Netanyahu's Likud and Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu parties would win a combined total of 37 seats in the 120-member parliament, compared with 42 at present.

French President Francois Hollande vowed Thursday to wipe out anti-Semitism and ensure the security of Jews as he and Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu paid homage to three children and a rabbi killed by an Islamist gunman in southwestern France.

"France will hunt down terrorism ...by all possible means," Hollande said during the emotional service at the Ohr Torah school in Toulouse, where the four were shot dead by al-Qaida inspired killer Mohamed Merah on March 19.

The Arab world will be "relieved" if Israel strikes at Iranian nuclear installations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published Wednesday by France's Paris-Match weekly.

He said in case of an attack, "five minutes later, contrary to what skeptics think, I believe there will be a great feeling of relief throughout the region," said Netanyahu, who on Wednesday began a key two-day visit to France.