The coordination and follow-up committee of the Right to Return Campaign on Friday announced “the suspension of the popular march on the Lebanese-Palestinian border” previously scheduled for Sunday, calling instead for “a general strike in all (Palestinian refugee) camps across Lebanon” on that day.

An Nahar daily reported Friday that the Lebanese army has taken a firm decision to prevent Palestinian refugees from marching towards Lebanon’s border with Israel on Sunday to prevent the Jewish state from launching an assault on Lebanon.

Israeli businessman Sammy Ofer, whose company Ofer Brothers is embroiled in a scandal over illegal trade with Iran, was found dead at his Tel Aviv home on Friday, media reports said. He was 89.

Ofer, a shipping magnate who was one of the founders of the Ofer Brothers Group, died early on Friday of a "serious illness," Israeli public radio said, without giving further details.

Former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan warned Israel against any military attack on Iran, stressing that any regional conflict with Tehran might drag Hizbullah and Syria into war.

During a conference at the Tel Aviv University Dagan said that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities should only be considered as the last resort and after all other means and methods have been exhausted.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office on Thursday denied reports of a breakthrough in negotiations to free Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian militants in Gaza in 2006.

Netanyahu's office issued the statement after Egyptian newspaper El-Mesryoon reported that a deal to free Shalit in exchange for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners would be completed within hours.

French writer Bernard Henri Levy said he delivered a message on Thursday from Libyan rebel leaders to Israel's premier saying they would seek diplomatic ties with Israel if they came to power.

Levy told Agence France Presse he passed on the verbal message from Libya's National Transitional Council during a 90-minute meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

France is ready to host a Middle East peace conference before the end of July to help re-launch stalled negotiations, France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Thursday.

Speaking in Ramallah, Juppe warned that the current stalemate between Israel and the Palestinians was "untenable" and said France was willing to transform a July meeting of international donors into a broader peace conference.

Six Israeli police officers and five settlers were injured early Tuesday morning in violent clashes that erupted as police dismantled an illegal settlement outpost, a police spokesman told Agence France Presse.

Police moved in to the Ali Ayan outpost in the West Bank north of Ramallah in the early hours of Tuesday morning, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon has voiced hope that Italy will not draw down its peacekeeping force in Lebanon in the wake of the recent attack on its contingent in the south.

"I hope that Italy will maintain the current levels of its Lebanon contingent, in spite of the tragic attack on the Italian UNIFIL convoy," Ban told ANSA news agency on Wednesday.

Government Commissioner to the Military Tribunal Judge Saqr Saqr charged Sheikh Mohammed Ali Ismail al-Husseini with spying for Israel on Wednesday.

The army intelligence detained al-Husseini, who is the secretary-general of the Arabic-Islamic Council, last week after suspecting that he had collaborated with the Israeli Mossad.

Attention will be drawn to southern Lebanon on June 5 as a rally is expected to staged in commemoration of the day of the Naksa, reported As Safir on Wednesday.

High ranking military sources told the newspaper that the Lebanese army is taking the necessary precautions, stressing that the recent clashes that broke out on the Nakba Day at Maroun al-Ras will not be repeated.