Bedouin in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Saturday released three South Korean tourists and their Egyptian tour guide a day after abducting them, South Sinai's governor told Agence France Presse.

Khaled Fouda said the tourists, all women, "were unharmed" and he was waiting for them to arrive at a hotel near St Catherine's monastery, from where the tourists were returning on Friday when they were snatched by armed Bedouin.

Middle East peace Quartet envoy Tony Blair met Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Amman on Saturday to discuss the stalled peace process, Blair's office said.

A statement said Blair reaffirmed to Abbas the Quartet and international community's "commitment" to the peace process, "and the need to launch credible and serious negotiations in order to reach the two-state solution."

The U.S. military's top general met Egypt's ruling field marshal on Saturday amid a row between the allies over impending trials of American pro-democracy activists.

The meeting in Cairo had been "long planned," according to General Martin Dempsey's spokesman, but officials were hoping Dempsey would persuade Cairo to back off the planned trials.

Hamas "will never recognize Israel," its Gaza prime minister said Saturday in a speech in Iran that is likely to complicate Palestinian efforts to form a unity government in the teeth of opposition from the Jewish state.

"They want us to recognize the Israeli occupation and cease resistance but, as the representative of the Palestinan people and in the name of all the world's freedom seekers, I am announcing from Azadi Square in Tehran that we will never recognize Israel," Ismail Haniya said.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak approved the construction of buildings in the West Bank to serve as an educational facility for special-needs youth, his office said on Friday.

The site, named Gevaot and located in the Gush Etzion bloc, "is not a settlement nor is it new in the Gush Etzion regional council, and is part of Alon Shvut," a nearby settlement, the statement from Barak's office said.

Israel and the United States recently carried out a successful test of the Arrow anti-missile system over the Mediterranean Sea, the Israeli defense ministry said on Friday.

During the target-only tracking exercise, the Arrow's radar tracked a target "representative of potential ballistic missile threats facing Israel," the statement read, and "transferred information to the Citron Tree Battle Management Controller, which prepared a simulated intercept solution."

Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said that his country is ready for any act of provocation by Hizbullah over the deepening crisis in Syria.

During a meeting on Thursday with 15 U.N. envoys in New York, He expressed concern that Hizbullah will use a provocation against Israel as a means of distracting the world from violence in Syria.

An Israeli task force composed of twenty soldiers supported by four military vehicles entered 75 meters into the disputed area near Adaysseh and erected barbed wires.

The UNIFIL and the Lebanese security services arrived at the scene, and the Lebanese army launched a probe into the incident.

The Palestinian leadership on Thursday endorsed the latest agreement between the heads of Fatah and Hamas and called for preparations for elections to be speeded up.

Palestinian President and Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal inked an accord in Doha on Monday placing Abbas at the head of an interim government to supervise the run-up to elections later this year.

Sophisticated weapons could be transferred from Syria to Hizbullah if the regime of Bashar Assad falls, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned on Thursday.

"You have to be alert to the possibility so that during the fall of the regime there will not be the transfer of sophisticated Syrian weapons to Hizbullah and Lebanon," he told Israeli military radio.