Former TV journalist Shelly Yacimovitch who was elected as head of Israel's Labor, beating former union boss Amir Peretz, on Thursday urged Israelis to join her in rebuilding the country.

The 51-year-old secured 56 percent of the vote in a run-off contest on Wednesday, compared with 46 percent for Peretz, leaving her to take the helm of the ailing party, according to official results published early on Thursday.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Wednesday on the United Nations to admit Palestine as a non-member state, upgrading its status as simple observer but opposing a Palestinian bid for full membership.

In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Sarkozy also called for "one year to reach a definitive agreement" between Israel and the Palestinians, saying the usual U.S.-led peace process should not bypass European, Arab or other countries.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun noted on Wednesday that the fall of the Syrian regime will not benefit Christians or Muslims, saying that the solution to the crisis lies in change and stability.

He told UPI: “Should the Syrian regime be overthrown, then the Christians and Muslims won’t have any freedom.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in New York Wednesday to attend the U.N. General Assembly, overshadowed by a Palestinian bid to seek membership of the world body as a state.

"The prime minister has landed," an Israeli official waiting to greet him at the airport told Agence France Presse. Netanyahu was due to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama within hours to discuss the looming Palestinian showdown.

Thousands of Palestinians on Wednesday were gathering across the West Bank for rallies in support of the campaign to join the United Nations as the 194th member state.

In Ramallah, the political capital of the West Bank, thousands of people were heading for the city Centre, waving flags and chanting slogans, for a rally expected to start late morning, an AFP correspondent said.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday said that for progress to be made in the thorny clash at the United Nations over Palestinian statehood, both sides will have to give.

"It's up to us, and mainly to our counterpart, the Palestinian leadership, Mahmud Abbas, and to others, to show the leadership and start to move," Barak told CNN television.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday that he isn’t after a “confrontation” with the United States or any other country over a bid for U.N. membership of a Palestinian state.

“The Palestinian people have the right to have a recognized state in the international community. This is our right,” Abbas told An Nahar.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday called on Turkey and Israel to repair their ties strained by a crisis over a deadly 2010 flotilla raid.

"The president underscored his interest in seeing a resolution of that issue between those two countries who are both allies of ours, and encouraged them to work towards that end," said a top White House advisor said.

Jordan's King Abdullah II has warned that Israel's stance in peace talks with the Palestinian is fuelling instability in the Middle East, in remarks published Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal.

"If we can't get the Israelis and Palestinians together in this next couple of days, then what signal is that for the future process?" King Abdullah asked in a WSJ interview in New York ahead of the U.N. General Assembly.

Israel's consulate in the southern French port city of Marseille was temporarily evacuated Tuesday when a bomb disposal squad found a mock device placed in a van parked outside.

Police were alerted after an anonymous caller telephoned in a bomb threat, and found a pressure cooker with protruding wires and marked with a radiation warning sticker in a Renault van parked outside the Israeli mission.