Hamas is looking to focus its energies on popular resistance without giving up its right to wage armed struggle against Israel, the Islamist movement's leader Khaled Meshaal told Agence France Presse in an interview.

"Every people has the right to fight against occupation in every way, with weapons or otherwise. But at the moment, we want to cooperate with the popular resistance," the group's Damascus-based leader said in the interview late on Thursday.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's time as president is all but up as he pursues a bloody crackdown on dissidents, Israeli deputy prime minister Moshe Ya'alon said Thursday.

"It seems that he's approaching his end as leader of Syria," Ya'alon said after meeting Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg of the Czech Republic, a country that is a traditional Israeli ally.

American Jewish blogger Richard Silverstein has claimed that Israel was behind the explosion that rattled the Hizbullah stronghold of Siddiqin in southern Lebanon on Wednesday.

Media reports have said that the explosion went off in a Hizbullah arms depot but the Lebanese army attributed the blast to a mine or cluster bomb.

Israel’s Home Front Defense Minister Matan Vilnai announced on Tuesday that the Jewish state will properly handle a possible war with Hizbullah, adding that the party greatly fears Israel.

He said while visiting the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Shmona: “The Home Front Defense Ministry is exerting great efforts and funds in preparing for the next war with Hizbullah.”

Information Minister Walid al-Daouq announced after a cabinet session on Wednesday that the government would seek "clarifications" from the U.S. ambassador to Beirut after Hizbullah said it had succeeded in exposing CIA operatives.

Earlier on Wednesday, Agriculture Minister Hussein Hajj Hassan, who represents Hizbullah in the 30-seat government, told reporters during a break from the cabinet meeting that the government had "decided to summon U.S. Ambassador Maura Connelly to question her on this issue."

Days of protest in Egypt, ahead of elections expected to produce big wins for the Muslim Brotherhood, have stirred fears in Israel about bilateral ties and the future of the countries' peace treaty.

Israel had largely avoided comment on the unrest, which has seen dozens of Egyptians killed, but with protesters showing no signs of calling off their demonstrations, officials here have started to show concern.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal will meet in Cairo this week despite the unrest rocking Egypt, a senior Hamas official said on Tuesday.

The meeting between the exiled Hamas leader and Abbas, who heads the rival Fatah movement, will go ahead "as scheduled on Thursday," Hamas official Ismail Radwan told AFP.

An American official stressed that espionage will always be fraught with dangers, reported As Safir newspaper on Tuesday.

He told the newspaper that collecting information about enemies who are always trying to uncover spies within their ranks will always be a risky matter.

One police officer was killed and another injured in Egypt's Sinai on Monday during clashes with members of an Islamist group suspected of attacks on a pipeline, a security official said.

Police officers in the north Sinai town of el-Arish were preparing to arrest individuals suspected of belonging to the Islamist al-Takfeer wal Hijra, when they were shot at and clashes ensued killing one officer and wounding another, the official said.

Iran dares Israel to attack, because the retaliation would send the Jewish state to "the dustbin of history," a senior Revolutionary Guards commander said, according to the Fars news agency Monday.

"Our greatest wish is that they commit such a mistake," the chief of the Guards' Aerospatiale division, Amir-Ali Hadjizadeh, was quoted as saying.