Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will meet in Paris in the coming days to discuss the Palestinian bid for U.N. recognition, Abbas' envoy said.

Palestinian foreign minister Ryad al-Maliki said Abbas would depart for France after meeting Tuesday with Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos on the request for U.N. Security Council recognition of a Palestinian state.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she will call Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later Monday to try to set a date for a restart of stalled peace talks.

Speaking at the close of talks between European Union foreign ministers, Ashton said she would call "to invite them to meet in the coming days."

A Palestinian was killed in northern Gaza near the border with Israel on Monday, the DFLP group and medics said, in circumstances disputed by the Israeli army.

Adham Abu Selmiya, spokesman for Gaza's emergency services, said a man had been killed by Israeli tank fire but his body was so badly disfigured that medics were not immediately able to identify him.

Israelis were on Monday officially advised to steer clear of the Sinai peninsula in neighboring Egypt during the upcoming Jewish festival of Sukkot, the anti-terror bureau said in a statement.

"In light of the upcoming holiday of Sukkot, the anti-terror bureau reiterates its severe travel warning in respect to the Sinai, and recommends against travelling there," it said, urging all Israelis currently staying to "leave the area immediately" and return to Israel.

Israeli President Shimon Peres has sent a letter of condolence to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the death of his mother, the Anatolia news agency reported Monday.

"From my experience, I know very well the deep sense of grief, feeling like an orphan and the boundless sorrow of your loss," Peres was quoted as saying in the letter.

Vandals defaced graves in two cemeteries, one Muslim and the other Christian, with anti-Arab graffiti in Jaffa south of Tel Aviv, Israeli police said on Saturday.

The vandals wrote "Death to Arabs" and "Price Tag" on 22 graves in the Muslim cemetery and on four in the Christian burial ground, media reports said.

Jerusalem municipality has given the green light for the construction of 11 new apartments in the Jewish settlement of Pisgat Zeev in the annexed east of the city, a councilor told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

"The municipality approved at the beginning of the week the construction of 11 apartments, as part of a project of 300 housing units supposed to be approved section by section," Pepe Alalou of the leftist Meretz party said.

Israel has warned Syrian President Bashar Assad that should Tel Aviv be attacked, then it will retaliate by bombing the Gaza Strip and the whole of Lebanon.

Israel’s NFC website reported that the Jewish state’s government relayed this message to the Syrian president through European intelligence circles.

Israel limited access to Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound on Friday for fear of violence on the Muslim weekly day of prayer, which leads directly into Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, police said.

The restrictions were part of a wider lockdown, under which the army closed all entry points from the West Bank on Thursday night.

Israel's Supreme Court on Thursday barred nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu from emigrating on the grounds he still poses a threat to state security, Israeli media reported.

Vanunu, under orders to stay in Tel Aviv and not to speak to journalists, "has proved several times he cannot be trusted and does not respect the letter of the law," Supreme Court judges said in turning down his appeal.