The Israeli government on Sunday voted to go ahead with plans to raise the 2013 budget deficit target to three percent of GDP, despite objections from the governor of the central bank.

The weekly cabinet meeting agreed to seek to fast-track the plan through parliament with a view to passing it into law as early as possible, the government said in a statement.

An Israeli military court on Sunday sentenced a former military leader of Hamas to multiple life sentences after convicting him of ordering the killing of dozens of Israelis, the army said.

"The Ofer military court sentenced Ibrahim Hamed to 54 life sentences," a statement said, referring to an Israeli court and prison complex located in the West Bank between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sent a letter to Egypt's newly elected President Mohamed Morsi, urging him to uphold a peace treaty between the two countries, a source told AFP on Sunday.

The letter, first reported by Israeli daily Haaretz on Sunday morning, "stressed Israel's desire to continue cooperation and to strengthen the peace," an Israeli source said on condition of anonymity.

Ex-prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, a former soldier, spy and statesman, has died at the age of 96, Israeli officials announced on Saturday.

"Yitzhak Shamir has left us," current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement.

A planned meeting on Sunday between Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israel's vice prime minister, Shaul Mofaz, has been called off, a senior Palestinian official said.

"The meeting between president Abbas and Shaul Mofaz has been postponed to a later date," the official in the West Bank city of Ramallah told Agence France Presse on Saturday, without giving a reason or a new date.

The Palestine Liberation Organization called on Saturday for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting on Israel's policy of building Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

"The PLO executive committee has decided to call for the Security Council to convene an urgent meeting to discuss settlements," the committee said after a meeting in the West Bank political capital of Ramallah.

Lebanese shepherd Youssef Zahra, who was kidnapped by Israeli forces from a disputed area, returned to Lebanon after he was released on Saturday.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon handed over Zahra to the Lebanese army intelligence base in the area of Naqoura.

Egypt has seized a large weapons consignment, including Grad rockets, that had been smuggled from Libya and could have been headed to the Gaza Strip, press reports said on Saturday.

The haul, which included 138 Grad rockets and a further 139 Grad warheads, was made in the Mediterranean coastal town of Marsa Matruh, not far from the Libyan border, Egyptian newspapers reported.

Lebanese shepherd Youssef Mohamed Zahra was abducted Friday by the Israeli army near the Southern area of Shebaa Farms, while he was grazing his flock in the Shahel region, state-run National News Agency reported.

The farmer was ambushed by Israeli troops who crossed 20 meters into the Lebanese territory.

Israel has finished evacuating some 30 settler families from an illegal West Bank outpost, encountering little resistance, police and the military said Friday.

The Ulpana outpost was evacuated in two phases, with the second set of families leaving Thursday night. Police say residents left peacefully, but 15 settlers from outside Ulpana barricaded themselves inside one apartment to protest the eviction.