Top U.S. military chief General Martin Dempsey arrives in Israel late on Thursday evening for talks with Israel's political and military leaders that are expected to focus on Iran's nuclear program.

Dempsey's trip will be his first to Israel since becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October.

Israeli Special Forces detained two Palestinians early on Thursday morning near the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a security official told Agence France Presse.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Israeli forces "crept into the Rafah area and took two citizens to an unknown destination and there is no information on what happened to them."

A former Israeli military intelligence chief said Iran has all the components to build a nuclear bomb, an Israeli newspaper reported Thursday.

It was not clear whether Amos Yadlin, who retired in November 2010, was referring to the mechanical elements of a bomb or implying the Iranians have sufficient weapons-grade uranium, a critical ingredient for bombmaking.

Israeli forces razed a settler outpost near the West Bank oasis town of Jericho early on Thursday, sparking clashes with residents, a police spokesman said.

Three policemen were lightly injured and three settlers arrested during the operation to remove Sela Bracha, an outpost of six wooden huts in the Jordan Valley, spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

An Israeli air raid on the northern Gaza Strip killed one Palestinian and wounded two on Wednesday, a spokesman for the Hamas-run emergency services told Agence France Presse.

The strike hit a field used by Hamas militants just east of the town of Beit Hanun, Palestinian security sources said.

Any decision by Israel on whether to attack Iran in a bid to halt its nuclear program remains "very far away," Defense Minister Ehud Barak told army radio on Wednesday.

"We don't have a decision to go forward with these things. We don't have a decision or a date for taking such a decision. This whole thing is very far away," he said.

Israel has serious concerns about what will happen to "huge stockpiles" of chemical and biological weapons in Syria when the Assad regime collapses, a senior military official said on Tuesday.

Major-General Amir Eshel, head of the Israeli military's planning division, said the working assumption was the regime of President Bashar Assad would eventually fall.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati and Speaker Nabih Berri launched on Tuesday the 300-million dollar Litani River project to irrigate land in southern Lebanon.

Miqati said at the launch at the Grand Serail: “Its success cannot be achieved without fortifying Lebanon’s stability.”

A Bangkok court ordered on Tuesday a Lebanese-Swedish Hizbullah suspect detained for 12 days for illegally possessing explosive materials.

Thai police charged Atris Hussein on Monday after he led them to a warehouse containing four tons of urea fertilizer and several gallons of liquid ammonium nitrate.

The current regime of U.S. and EU sanctions against Iran are not enough to force Tehran to halt its nuclear program, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

Although Western sanctions against the Islamic republic have been stepped up, Israel remains skeptical that Tehran will abandon its nuclear program without harsh steps against its oil-based economy and its banking sector.