Two Arab Israeli teenage girls stabbed and lightly wounded a guard at a bus station in central Israeli city Ramle on Thursday before being arrested, police said.

The attack was the latest in a four-month wave of Palestinian violence targeting Israeli civilians and security personnel in the West Bank and Israel.

Israeli former premier Ehud Olmert on Tuesday admitted obstructing justice as part of a plea bargain to seek less prison time, his first confession in a series of graft-linked trials.

Olmert, 70, is already facing a jail term of 18 months beginning on February 15 for a separate conviction of bribery.

Israeli forces demolished 24 Palestinian buildings in a disputed military zone in the West Bank Tuesday, including 10 funded by the European Union, leaving families homeless, authorities and residents said.

Soldiers destroyed the structures in and around the village of Khirbet Jenbah south of Hebron, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel said. Israeli officials said the buildings were illegal.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told Israel "don't shoot the messenger" as he renewed criticism of the "humiliating" Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Ban said in an opinion piece published in the New York Times that Israel cannot keep "lashing out at every well-intentioned critic" of its policies and that he had "pointed out a simple truth."

A spy device was discovered on Friday in the southern region of al-Adaisseh, reported the National News Agency.

It said that it was found near the border fence with Israel in a disputed area known as al-Mahafeer.

U.S. and British intelligence agencies for years hacked into Israeli drones carrying out surveillance to prepare for a potential strike on Iran, Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot reported on Friday.

Citing documents leaked by rogue U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, Yediot said that the operation, codenamed "Anarchist", began in 1998 at a British facility in the Troodos mountains of Cyprus and a U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) site at Menwith Hill, in northern England.

An Arab Israeli who killed three people in a January 1 shooting spree in Tel Aviv may have been inspired by the Islamic State jihadist group, the internal security agency said Thursday.

Shin Bet released a video and information shedding light for the first time on the motives of Nashaat Melhem, 31, who was shot dead during his arrest after a week on the run.

A hunger-striking Palestinian journalist is to remain in Israeli jail despite warnings over his deteriorating health, the country's top court ruled Wednesday.

The Supreme Court said it would not release Mohammed al-Qiq immediately but would follow his health on a daily basis.

Former Israeli president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres was released from hospital Tuesday, his office said, two days after he was rushed there with chest pains and an irregular heartbeat.

Peres "was admitted to the hospital on Sunday evening following a slight heart arrhythmia, and remained in the hospital an extra day for observation at the request of the medical team," a statement said.

Two Palestinians stabbed two women Monday at a grocery in an Israeli settlement of the West Bank before being shot dead, police and medics said, in the latest in nearly four months of attacks.

Israel's military said two pipe bombs were also found in the area and were being defused.