Only crippling sanctions against Iran's central bank and its oil and gas industries will force Tehran to halt its nuclear drive, a senior Israeli minister said in remarks published on Tuesday.

According to the Maariv newspaper, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the only thing which would cause Iran's Islamic regime to sit up and listen was a series of "crippling sanctions."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared Monday that the Obama administration would work with ascendant Islamist parties of the Muslim world, answering one of the central U.S. policy questions resulting from the Arab Spring.

Delivering an address at the National Democratic Institute, Clinton offered a forthright embrace of the democratic changes enveloping North Africa and the Middle East at a time when the euphoria of the successful revolutions from Egypt to Libya is giving way to the hard and unprecedented work of creating stable democracies.

Twelve Jewish settlers, seven of them minors, were arrested on Monday when Israeli police dismantled three structures in a settlement outpost near Ramallah, an Israeli police spokeswoman said.

The arrests occurred early on Monday as police and troops demolished three structures set up illegally in the unauthorized settlement outpost of Oz Zion east of Ramallah, spokeswoman Luba Samri told Agence France Presse.

Three Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire east of Gaza City on Monday, a Gaza medical official and the Israeli military said.

"Three Palestinians were wounded by Israel fire in the Shejaiyah district east of Gaza City," emergency services spokesman Adham Abu Selmiya told Agence France Presse, saying one was moderately hurt and the other two sustained light injuries.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the United States and Israel of seeking world support for a military strike on Iran, in comments published Monday in which he also warned against attacks on his country.

Ahmadinejad, in an interview with Egypt's state-owned Al-Akhbar newspaper, lashed out at Israel after its president, Shimon Peres, warned at the weekend that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely.

Israel was hit by a brief general strike on Monday that affected hospitals, banks, ports and the country's main international airport, but which ended after just four hours.

The strike shut down all government offices, universities, ports, post offices and the Tel Aviv stock exchange for most of the morning following a dispute over the working conditions of hundreds of thousands of contract workers employed by the government.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Sunday that sanctions against Iran should be toughened and that "everything must be done" to avoid a military conflict over Tehran's nuclear program.

"We have imposed sanctions that continue to expand, we can toughen them to put pressure on Iran," Juppe told Europe 1 radio.

A crucial IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program due in the next few days -- raised as a possible trigger for war by Israel -- is based on "counterfeit" claims, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in comments published on Sunday.

The update, expected to be released to International Atomic Energy Agency members on Tuesday or Wednesday, is believed to allege that Iran did theoretical modeling on nuclear warheads and is developing missiles to carry them, according to diplomats at the UN nuclear watchdog.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani said Sunday that Lebanon should improve its relations with the international community and rejected any deal that would divide the region.

“We should hold onto each other amid attempts to redraw the map of the world particularly in our Arab region,” Qabbani said in his Eid al-Adha sermon.

Israeli President Shimon Peres warned on Sunday that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely, days before a report by the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog on Iran's nuclear program is due.

"The possibility of a military attack against Iran is now closer to being applied than the application of a diplomatic option," Peres told the Israel Hayom daily.