Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Wednesday to expand the Beit El settlement by 300 homes after MPs voted down a bill to prevent the razing of buildings in one of its neighborhoods.

Netanyahu had opposed the bill, which would have circumvented a Supreme Court ruling ordering the dismantling of five buildings in the Ulpana neighborhood -- a settlement outpost built on private Palestinian land -- by legalizing outposts.

The United States endorsed Wednesday the Arab League's proposal to invoke the United Nations' tough Chapter VII sanctions against the Syrian regime.

But Washington held off from supporting Chapter VII's powers to initiate a military intervention and focused on economic sanctions against Syrian President Bashar Assad's embattled government.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet her British, French, Turkish and some Arab counterparts Wednesday to "discuss the situation in Syria," a Turkish diplomatic source said.

Britain's foreign minister, William Hague, France's Laurent Fabius, Turkey's Ahmet Davutoglu and several Arab ministers will be at the informal evening meeting in Istanbul on the 15-month-old crisis, the source said.

Russia and China strongly oppose foreign military intervention in Syria or Iran, said a joint statement released on Wednesday after Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese leaders.

"Russia and China are decisively against attempts to regulate the Syrian crisis with outside military intervention, as well as imposing a policy of regime change, including within the Security Council," the statement said.

Israeli MPs on Wednesday voted down the preliminary reading of a draft bill that would have retroactively legalized settler homes built on private Palestinian land.

The 22-69 vote effectively thwarted an attempt to circumvent a Supreme Court ruling ordering the removal of five buildings from a settlement outpost known as the Ulpana neighborhood by July 1.

The premises of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi came under attack during the night but there were no casualties, embassy and security sources told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

"There was an attack late last night on the United States office in Benghazi," a U.S. embassy official said, adding that one was hurt.

The Palestinians urged foreign governments on Wednesday to implement the recommendations of an Amnesty International report criticizing Israeli prison conditions and practices.

"The Palestinian government calls on the international community to take action to end -- and not merely condemn -- the torture, detention without trial and other abuses highlighted," the Palestinian government said in a statement.

A Bahrain policewoman pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges of torturing a female journalist during last year's crackdown on anti-government protests, lawyers said.

The officer, Lieutenant Sara al-Mousa, denied torturing Nazeeha Saeed, who is the Bahrain correspondent of France 24 and Radio Monte Carlo Doualiya, and was not in court, the lawyers said.

Dozens of protesters remained in Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square on Wednesday after camping out following a mass demonstration against verdicts handed down in ex-president Hosni Mubarak's murder trial.

Fresh protests were expected in both Cairo and the port city of Alexandria later in the day, to mark the second anniversary of the killing of Khaled Said, a young Egyptian beaten to death in police custody in 2010.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said international pressure on Iran aimed at curbing its nuclear ambitions is "inadequate", in comments published in a German newspaper Wednesday.

Netanyahu told the Bild daily that although sanctions affected Iran and its economy, they did not halt its nuclear program.