A letter from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the stalled peace process doesn't address key issues hindering talks, the Palestine Liberation Organization said on Sunday.

Speaking after a meeting of the PLO's executive committee, secretary general Yasser Abed Rabbo said the Israeli premier's message contained no answers to the questions posed in a letter by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas last month.

Thousands of Jews from Morocco, Israel and other parts of the world have over the past week carried out an annual pilgrimage to the Islamic nation to honor celebrated rabbis.

Morocco may not be the likeliest of Jewish pilgrim destinations, but the North African nation has for centuries had a vibrant Jewish population and some 1,200 of the faith's pious ancestors are buried in cemeteries there.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday that war was not essential to achieve the destruction of Israel, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported.

"The destruction of the Zionist regime does not necessitate making war," he said in a speech during a tour of northeast Iran.

Hamas foreign minister Mohammed Awad was in Tehran on Saturday for meetings with senior officials including Iran's top diplomat and a security chief, Iranian media reported.

During his visit, which had been unannounced, Awad met with Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and Saeed Jalili, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, the reports said.

Israeli and Egyptian officials are making progress in attempts to end a mass hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners, some of them close to death, Gaza's Hamas prime minister said on Saturday.

"There was progress in talks between Egypt and Israel," Ismail Hanieh said in a statement. "This is an important development concerning the demands of the prisoners."

Israeli President Shimon Peres, 88, was admitted to hospital on Friday for what his spokeswoman called a "very, very simple" operation for a hernia.

Spokeswoman Ayelet Frish told Agence France Presse that during a five-day state visit to Canada this week Peres was diagnosed with a hernia and treated by his personal physician, who accompanied him on the trip.

A Lebanese army team in cooperation with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon set demarcation points in the border town of Kfarkila to prevent Israel from infringing on Lebanese territories, An Nahar daily reported Friday.

The newspaper said that the move was aimed at preventing the Israeli army from encroaching on Lebanese land while constructing a one-kilometer-long separation wall.

Israel's prison service has offered to ease restrictions on Palestinian prisoners in a bid to end a mass hunger strike that has left several detainees close to death, sources told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

Just under 1,600 Palestinian prisoners are currently refusing food in a wide-ranging protest against solitary confinement, detention without charge and restrictions on family visits, education and various privileges.

A rocket fired from Gaza landed in southern Israel overnight, causing no damage or casualties, a military spokeswoman said on Thursday.

"A rocket fired from Gaza landed last night in the Shaar Hanegev area. There was no damage or casualties," she told Agence France Presse.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon urged Israel to try or release hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners after activists denounced his "silence" in a protest outside the U.N.'s West Bank offices.

Dozens of demonstrators calling for action to help the weakening prisoners stopped U.N. employees from entering their offices in Ramallah, waving banners reading: "UNjust" and "UNfair."