Syria's foreign minister said on Monday that his government was "facilitating" the work of U.N. observers deployed to monitor a ceasefire, which both sides have been accused of violating, state media reported.

"We continue to facilitate the work of the U.N. team," Walid Muallem told chief U.N. observer Major General Robert Mood, according to state news agency SANA.

The uprising against Bashar al-Assad's regime, and the subsequent killings and reprisals, has fractured the village of Azzara along sectarian lines, turning peaceful neighbors into sworn enemies.

Sunni Turkmen living in the hills of Azzara, in central Homs province, and Alawite residents of the village below, had seemingly coexisted since Ottoman times. Today, a wall of fear separates the two sects.

Israel's Supreme Court on Monday ordered two Palestinians to leave their properties in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, ruling that the properties were owned by Jews, their lawyer told Agence France Presse.

Lawyer Mohammed Dahleh said the court had rejected his clients' appeals, and ruled that Ghazi Zalum's house and Ismail Wazwaz's shop had been owned by Jews in the period before the establishment of Israel in 1948, with the properties later falling into Jordan's hands.

China said Monday it hoped parliamentary elections being held in Syria would help promote reform in the conflict-torn country, as the leader of the nation's opposition visited Beijing.

Syria is currently holding its first "multiparty" parliamentary elections in five decades, but the polls have been dismissed as a sham by the main opposition forces, which have refused to participate.

A Syrian daily on Monday hailed the defeat in France's presidential elections of Nicolas Sarkozy, whose foreign minister Alain Juppe had raised the prospect of military intervention to end the crisis.

"The Sarkozy-Juppe duo in the dustbin of history," announced the front page headline of pro-government daily, al-Watan.

Israel's Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by two Palestinian prisoners who have been on hunger strike for 69 days in protest at being held without charge, their lawyer told Agence France Presse.

"The Supreme Court refused both appeals," Jamil Khatib said of the move by Bilal Diab, 27, and Thaer Halahla, 34, who had appealed to Israel's highest court on Thursday to end the administrative detention orders under which they are being held.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he will push for September 4 as the date for early elections, as he moved to have a bill passed to dissolve parliament.

"We are proposing September 4," Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting, stressing that the target was to hold elections in four months' time.

Syria's main opposition group on Monday slammed the regime for holding parliamentary polls "under gunfire," saying it did not have the legitimacy to run elections.

The Syrian National Council, an exiled opposition umbrella organization, in a statement condemned the regime's decision to hold elections "under gunfire, missiles of all kinds and genocide."

Suspected al-Qaida gunmen killed at least 20 soldiers in attacks on two army posts in southern Yemen on Monday, a day after a wanted top militant died in an air raid, a military official said.

Jihadists attacked the military posts outside the city of Zinjibar, which they have controlled since May last year, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Syrians voted Monday in the first "multiparty" parliamentary election in five decades, against a backdrop of violence and dismissed as a sham by the opposition and bordering on the "ludicrous" by the U.S.

Voters cast their ballots in the capital and other regions, while in opposition strongholds residents boycotted the poll, instead staging protests and a general strike.