The March 14 General Secretariat praised on Wednesday the Syrian National Council’s open letter to the Lebanese people, saying that a free and independent Syria’s recognition of a sovereign Lebanon is the only way to rebuild solid Lebanese-Syrian ties based on trust and cooperation.

It said in a letter to the Syrian people: “Democratic change in Syria will mark an historic opportunity for its development and guarantee Lebanon’s independence.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed victory in Tuesday's primary of his rightwing Likud party over his sole rival, the hardline settler Moshe Feiglin.

"I thank you for the confidence and the renewed support that you have given me," Netanyahu told a party gathering before the official results were announced.

Members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party cast their ballots Tuesday in a primary the premier is tipped to win easily, beating his sole rival, the hardline settler Moshe Feiglin.

Netanyahu and his wife Sarah were first in line to cast their ballots in Jerusalem as polls opened for the vote, which the premier moved forward in December.

The Tel Aviv District Attorney's office on Tuesday filed charges against an Arab-Israeli couple for keeping their daughter locked up for nine years.

Details of the indictment served at the Petah Tikva District Court said the father and stepmother of the 20-year-old woman kept her locked in a bathroom or other small rooms in three different houses across the West Bank.

Israeli forces on Monday demolished a home in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina, residents told Agence France Presse.

The home, a makeshift structure in the Arab neighborhood, was knocked down by bulldozers that moved in around 6.30 am (04:30 GMT), according to the Samara family, who had been living in the building.

One of the most sophisticated drones in the Israeli military crashed by accident in a field on Sunday, without causing casualties, an army spokeswoman said.

"An Eytan (meaning "strong" in Hebrew) crashed by accident into a field today in Israel during a test being carried out jointly by the army and Israel Aerospace Industries. There were no injuries," the spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

Israel laid out a vision for an "impossible" border during exploratory talks with the Palestinians in Amman this month, a Palestinian official told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Israeli officials presented principles for their policy on future borders during the final round of the discussions organized by Jordan and the peacemaking Quartet.

A delegation from an opposition Iranian student group met Israel's centrist opposition leader and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni in Tel Aviv on Saturday.

An Agence France Presse photographer said the Confederation of Iranian Students delegation was headed by its secretary general, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, who said he was "happy to be in Israel, the only democracy in the region."

Israel's former army chief Gabi Ashkenazi said Thursday that no Sunni-led government will ever go as far with Iran and Hizbullah as Syrian President Bashar Assad did.

During the conference, which was organized by the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv University, the former army chief said that “there were vast and untrue estimates stating that the primary country equipping Hizbullah with weapons is Iran, while the truth was that Syria is equipping Hizbullah.”

A group of Israeli hackers said on Thursday they have attacked several Iranian websites, a day after a number of Israeli websites were taken offline in the latest incident in a low-level cyberwar.

In a statement posted on the Pastebin.com, a group calling themselves the "Israel Defense Force Team" said they had hacked the Iranian sites in response to similar attacks on an Israeli newspaper and hospital website a day earlier.