Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Thursday in Tunisia that his navy would patrol the Mediterranean and keep Israel in check.

"Israel will no longer be able to do what it wants in the Mediterranean and you'll be seeing Turkish warships in this sea," Erdogan said after a meeting with his Tunisian counterpart Beji Caid Essebsi.

Israel's Shin Bet internal security service said on Thursday that it had arrest a hardline Islamist group in northern Israel that was suspected of plotting attacks on security personnel.

A Shin Bet statement said that five Arab men from the Galilee village of Daburiyya were suspected of planning to attack an Israeli police post, and a soldier and border policeman living in the village.

Israeli ambassador to Jordan, Danny Navon was returning to Israel on Thursday with his staff, fearing a large demonstration outside the embassy in Amman over the weekend, Israeli public radio reported.

The Jerusalem Post newspaper said that calls for a mass rally had been posted of social networking site Facebook under the banner "No Zionist embassy on Jordanian territory."

Hardline Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned Wednesday there will be "harsh and grave consequences" if the Palestinians persist with their plan to seek U.N. membership as a state.

Speaking shortly before a scheduled meeting with EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton, Lieberman did not elaborate on the threatened consequences.

Israel's public diplomacy minister said on Wednesday that he hoped "common sense would prevail" in former friend and ally Turkey in the diplomatic crisis the two governments are now embroiled in.

"Despite the attempts on the Turkish side to provoke an escalation, we are acting with restraint," Yuli Edelstein told public radio. "We are not pouring oil on the fire, in the hope that common sense will prevail."

A Republican businessman has won a special election for a U.S. Congress seat in a Democrat bastion, dealing a major blow to President Barack Obama ahead of the 2012 White House race.

Republicans had portrayed the U.S. congressional race as a referendum on Obama, whose popularity has sunk as Americans have grown increasingly frustrated with the stalled economic recovery and nine percent unemployment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu restated that face-to-face talks were the key to peace with the Palestinians, in talks with Germany's foreign minister who wound up a trip to Israel on Tuesday.

"Peace will be achieved only through direct negotiations and not through unilateral moves," Netanyahu told Guido Westerwelle, according to a statement issued by his office after the two met in Jerusalem on Monday.

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said in interviews Tuesday that Iran would release two U.S. hikers jailed for spying in a couple of days on bail which their lawyer said had been set at $500,000 each.

"I am helping to arrange for their release in a couple of days so they will be able to return home. This is of course going to be a unilateral humanitarian gesture," Ahmadinejad told The Washington Post.

Hundreds of activists and officials from across the globe gather in Beirut Monday with one aim in mind -- to rid the planet of cluster munitions which have killed or maimed tens of thousands of people worldwide.

The conference, which runs through Friday, joins representatives of 80 of the 100 or so countries that have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, an international treaty which calls for the eradication of the deadly weapons.

Israeli officials called on Sunday for relations with Egypt to return to normal despite Friday's attack by a mob on Israel's embassy in Cairo.

"We shall do everything in order that relations between the two countries will return to normal," Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, considered close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told public radio.