Israeli authorities said Thursday they had opened an investigation into a video showing gun-wielding Jewish extremists at a wedding celebrating the death of a Palestinian toddler in a firebombing.

The video, broadcast by an Israeli news program, has spread online and drawn strong condemnation from Israeli politicians including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A Jerusalem knife attack on Wednesday ended with an Israeli stabbed to death, and another killed, seemingly by a stray police bullet, as officers shot dead the Palestinian assailants.

The attack occurred at the Old City's Jaffa Gate, a popular entrance for tourists at a time of increased visits to the Holy Land for the Christmas season.

Two tear gas canisters were thrown into a Palestinian home near Ramallah on Tuesday by suspected Jewish extremists, without hurting the family there at the time, Israeli police said.

The pre-dawn attack in Beitillu village on the occupied West Bank came with tensions high over the detention of alleged Jewish extremists over the July firebombing of a Palestinian home that killed a toddler along with his mother and father.

The Free Syrian Army claimed on Monday its responsibility for the assassination of prominent Hizbullah member Samir al-Quntar in Syria over the weekend.

It denied in a video Hizbullah's claims that Quntar and his companions were killed in an Israeli jet strike, saying that such allegations are aimed at “making light of the FSA's achievements.”

Palestinian mother Maleeha Awwad still cannot explain what happened the day her 14-year-old daughter stabbed a man with scissors and was shot dead by police.

As far as she knew Hadeel had walked to school with her cousin Norhan, 16. Instead the two girls went to Jerusalem's central market and carried out the attack.

Israel and Turkey have reached "understandings" to normalize ties, at a low since the Jewish state's deadly 2010 raid on a Turkish ship headed for the Gaza Strip, an Israeli official said Thursday.

The deal, drafted at a secret meeting in Switzerland, calls for Israel to compensate victims of the raid, a return of envoys and the start of talks on gas exports to Turkey, the unnamed official said.

A Palestinian tried to attack Israeli soldiers with a knife in the West Bank on Thursday and was shot dead, the army said, the latest incident in more than two-months of violence.

"During routine security activity in Hawwara, forces spotted a suspect and approached in order to question him," the army said in a statement of the incident near Nablus in an area where Israeli settlers and Palestinians cross a military checkpoint.

A saxophonist plays to indifferent passers-by before being interrupted by a wailing police siren -- a scene indicative of West Jerusalem nightlife subdued by more than two months of unrest.

"People have stopped going out to party, and even worse, they have got used to no longer going out," says Haggai Hirshman, who organizes events as part of a campaign to encourage young people to reinvest in downtown west Jerusalem, the Jewish part of the city.

The fate of two Israeli soldiers presumed killed during the 2014 Gaza war has resurfaced with an emotional appeal from one of their mothers and a mysterious letter.

The family of Oron Shaul -- pronounced dead by the Israeli army but whose body has never been recovered -- appealed for information on Sunday, after a letter purportedly written by the soldier was sent to the family.

An Arab who served in the Israeli army has joined the Islamic State group in Syria, the first soldier to do so, the Shin Bet domestic security agency said Sunday.

"It is the first time that a soldier in the Israeli army has joined the Islamic State," the agency said in a statement.