Some 1,000 Israelis and Palestinians gathered in east Jerusalem on Friday for a protest march to support the Palestinian bid for United Nations recognition.

The marchers waved Palestinian flags and carried signs reading "marching to independence" and "only free people can negotiate for peace," an Agence France Presse photographer said.

The United States said Thursday that it disagreed with the Arab League after it said it would submit a request for recognition of a Palestinian state to the United Nations.

"We do not believe attempts to resolve final status issues in international bodies like the United Nations are able to bring about the enduring peace, which both the parties and the United States seek," the State Department said in a written statement.

The ministerial committee charged with tackling the issue of the demarcation of Lebanon’s maritime border with Israel is set to prepare a legal and diplomatic file ahead of presenting the case to the United Nations, revealed Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour to An Nahar daily in remarks published on Thursday.

The daily noted that an international understanding of Lebanon’s position on Israel’s latest stand on the matter has emerged, saying that the U.N. should handle this file according to international and maritime laws.

Israeli jets bombed three sites in Gaza overnight after rockets were fired from the coastal strip, Palestinian officials and the Israeli military said on Thursday.

The Israeli air strikes were the second in as many days, as rocket fire from Gaza into Israel increased suddenly after months of relative quiet.

Lebanon has stressed its right to demarcate its maritime border in order to take advantage of its offshore oil wealth, security sources told the Central News Agency on Wednesday.

It demanded, during the regular tripartite meeting between Lebanon, Israel, and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon held on the Lebanese-Israeli border at Ras al-Naqoura, that the U.N. take over the matter of demarcating the border.

Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews clashed with police in a conservative neighborhood of Jerusalem on Wednesday as tax officials tried to carry out inspections, a police spokesman told Agence France Presse.

Micky Rosenfeld said six police officers were slightly injured as some 300 protestors threw projectiles at them, and six demonstrators were arrested for taking part in the disturbances.

Israeli jets bombed two sites in Gaza early on Wednesday, wounding one woman, after Palestinians fired three rockets into southern Israel, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.

The Israeli military said its aircraft "targeted two weapons manufacturing sites in the northern Gaza Strip."

A high-ranking source in the March 8 forces said that the majority agrees with former Premier Saad Hariri that it won’t be able to change anything in the indictment issued by the international tribunal.

But the source told As Safir daily on Wednesday that experience in the past six years showed that the U.S. and Israel are capable of changing the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s accusations.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed Tuesday to take the Palestinian bid for statehood to the U.N. after the diplomatic Quartet failed to reach a breakthrough to revive peace talks.

"We will go to the United Nations and we hope the United States will not use its veto, but that we will go with its agreement," the Palestinian leader told reporters after a meeting with Greek President Karolos Papoulias.

The fifth anniversary of Israel's war in Lebanon passed largely unmarked in the Jewish state on Tuesday, with no official events planned and the border between the neighbors mostly quiet.

The conflict that began on July 12, 2006, ending 34 days later with the deaths of 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, has faded into the background in Israeli public life.