U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Friday he was "ashamed" at a lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

"I feel guilty, ashamed of the lack of progress," he told an event organized by foreign affairs think-tank Chatham House in London.

A Palestinian journalist on a two-month hunger strike in an Israeli jail could die at any minute, his lawyer warned on Monday.

Mohammed al-Qiq's health is "very, very bad," lawyer Jawad Boulus told AFP after a visit on Sunday. "He faces the possibility of death at any moment."

Palestinian intelligence officers have arrested an employee of top negotiator and PLO secretary-general Saeb Erekat on accusations of "spying for Israel", a security source said on Sunday.

The high-ranking official said on condition of anonymity that the man employed in the negotiations department of the Palestine Liberation Organisation was arrested around two weeks ago.

It is a bitter Christmas for Elias Manna, who will celebrate alone for the first time because his five sons have left the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory hit by three wars since 2008.

"At first, they left to study there," Manna, 62, said as he stood before the large wooden cross in front of a church for Latin rite Catholics in Gaza City, explaining that his sons moved to Europe.

Greece's parliament approved a resolution Tuesday calling on the government to recognize the state of Palestine, but Prime Minister Alexis Tspiras said Athens will judge when the time is right to make the formal move.

At a special session attended by visiting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, all  parliamentary parties voted in favour of the move, speaker Nikos Voutsis said.

The fate of two Israeli soldiers presumed killed during the 2014 Gaza war has resurfaced with an emotional appeal from one of their mothers and a mysterious letter.

The family of Oron Shaul -- pronounced dead by the Israeli army but whose body has never been recovered -- appealed for information on Sunday, after a letter purportedly written by the soldier was sent to the family.

Two Israelis and a Palestinian were shot dead Friday in separate incidents in and around the West Bank city of Hebron, the army and medical sources said.

An unknown assailant opened fire on a car south of the city, the army said, killing a father and son and wounding a teenager.

Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian in the Gaza Strip on Friday during clashes along the border, the enclave's health ministry said.

Salame Abu Jamaa, 23, was shot in the head during a protest east of Khan Yunis, health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.

Israeli authorities said late Wednesday they had freed a Palestinian detainee who survived a two-month hunger strike, after holding him for a year without trial in a case that sharpened tensions in the West Bank.

"Mohammed Allan has just been released," Sivan Weizman, a spokeswoman for Israel Prisons Service, said in a message. 

An Israeli court on Tuesday ordered the jailing of a firebrand cleric whose Islamist group has been accused of “inciting” a wave of violence over Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

Raed Salah, the head of the radical northern wing of the Islamic Movement in Israel, was found guilty on appeal of inciting violence at the holy site in a 2007 speech.