Israel will release to the Palestinian Authority tax funds it collects on its behalf and withheld as punishment for its move to join the International Criminal Court, the premier's office said Friday.

"Tax revenues that have been accumulated through February will be transferred, after payments for services to the Palestinian population have been deducted, including electricity, water and hospital bills," a statement said.

France plans to begin talks at the United Nations on a new Security Council resolution to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Friday.

Fabius told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that discussions on a text would start "in the coming days."

Amnesty International said Thursday Palestinian rocket fire during the 2014 summer war in Gaza had killed more civilians in the Gaza Strip than in Israel.

Such deadly attacks on civilians on both sides constituted "a war crime," it said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government must take steps to freeze settlements that are threatening to "kill the very possibility of reaching peace," the U.N.'s Middle East envoy said Thursday.

In his final report to the Security Council as Middle East coordinator, Robert Serry said "I frankly do not know if it is already too late" to revive peace talks aimed at the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Mass abductions of children by groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State are on the rise, with the practice now becoming a tactic of war, a U.N. envoy warned Wednesday.

Leila Zerrougui, the special representative for children and conflict, urged the Security Council to punish armed groups who target children with sanctions and strengthen measures to protect children in conflict.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has more powers than ever to pursue a diplomatic offensive against Israel that is likely to accelerate with the re-election of his old adversary Benjamin Netanyahu.

Abbas turns 80 on Thursday, with March 26, 1935 widely accepted as the date of his birth, although his entourage seems keen to avoid all mention of his advanced age and has no plans for any celebration.

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah urged rival factions to set aside their differences, even as protesters gave him a cool reception in war-battered Gaza on Wednesday.

It was only Hamdallah's second visit to the Gaza Strip since a unity government agreed on by rivals Fatah and Hamas took office last June.

An Israeli court on Tuesday jailed for 15-and-a-half years a Palestinian caught fighting in Gaza during last summer's 50-day war between Israel and Hamas.

A transcript of proceedings in the Beersheba district court, in southern Israel, said that Mohammed Abu Zaraj, born in 1991, was one of a squad of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military wing, lying in ambush for advancing Israeli troops on July 27. 

U.S. President Barack Obama's chief of staff rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's attempts to distance himself from his comments rejecting Palestinian statehood, telling an Israel advocacy group Monday that the U.S. can't just overlook what Netanyahu said on the eve of his re-election.

"An occupation that has lasted more than 50 years must end," White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said.

Dozens of Palestinians and foreign supporters protested in east Jerusalem's walled Old City on Sunday against the threatened eviction of a Palestinian family to make way for Jewish settlers.

"No to the eviction of the Sub Laban family," read banners carried by demonstrators, referring to the eight occupants of the house near the flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque compound, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews.