The Palestinian campaign to secure full U.N. membership presents a greater threat to Israel than that posed by Hamas, the Israeli finance minister said on Wednesday.

"This Palestinian initiative represents a more serious threat than that posed by Hamas," Yuval Steinitz told Israel's public radio, referring to Gaza's Islamist rulers whose founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Israelis and Palestinians woke up to a fourth day of violence on Sunday, with militants firing 17 rockets into Israel despite an unusually quiet night in Gaza just hours after a rocket killed an Israeli.

Tensions in and around the Gaza Strip have soared since Thursday when militants staged a series of bloody shooting attacks in the Negev desert, killing eight Israelis and prompting a wave of bloody tit-for-tat exchanges.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday of trying to "undermine Israel's legitimacy" by demanding an apology for the 2010 deadly flotilla raid.

"The Turkish prime minister wants to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel by demanding an apology that would constitute an admission of guilt and undermine our right to self-defense against attacks from Gaza," he told public radio.

Ministers in the Israeli security cabinet were meeting on Wednesday to discuss the possible scenarios in September when Palestinians try to secure U.N. membership, Israel's main radio stations said.

The meeting was called by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a bid to talk through assessments of how things would play out in New York when the General Assembly meets in mid-September, as well as looking at the expected wave of rallies and demonstrations of support across the Palestinian territories.

Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu approved an Egyptian request to increase its number of troops in the Sinai Peninsula in order to "restore order" in the region, public radio said on Monday.

The number of Egyptian forces in the peninsula is limited by the terms of the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty, but Netanyahu approved the move following a request from Cairo, the radio said.

Tens of thousands gathered for fresh demonstrations Saturday outside Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, after leaders of a hugely popular social movement called for rallies across Israel to protest high prices and living conditions.

At 9:00 pm local time (18:00 GMT), some 50,000 people were mobilized throughout the country, police said.

Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas revealed he held four secret meetings with Israeli President Shimon Peres in a bid to revive stalled peace talks, a Palestinian official said Saturday.

He quoted Abbas as saying at a meeting of his Fatah party on Friday that: "I met Shimon Peres four times in Amman and London in an attempt to restart negotiations and the peace process on a correct foundation."

Israel's social protest movement on Wednesday called for demonstrations to be held across the Jewish state on Saturday except in Tel Aviv which saw mass rallies last week.

"We decided not to stage demonstrations in Tel Aviv but to call for rallies across the country," protest leader Stav Shafir told Agence France Presse.

Trading on Israel's Tel Aviv stock exchange was temporarily halted on Sunday after share prices fell six percent at the open on news of a U.S. credit rating downgrade, public radio reported.

Trading opened as normal on Sunday, the first day of Israel's working week, but mandatory suspensions went into effect minutes into the session as the stock exchange plunged.

Almost a quarter of a million Israelis rallied in central Tel Aviv on Saturday, police said, for a mass protest aimed at pushing the government into reforms to ease the cost of living.

The organizers appeared to have achieved their target of drawing a "critical mass" out onto the streets to underline the staying power of a movement which began in mid-July over housing costs.