The International Criminal Court prosecutor said Tuesday he would hold off on a probe into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian territories until the U.N. rules on Palestinian statehood.

"The office (of the prosecutor) has assessed that it is for the relevant bodies at the U.N. or the Assembly of State Parties to make a legal determination whether Palestine qualifies as a state for the purpose of acceding to the Rome Statute", the court's founding treaty, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

Israeli forces on Tuesday razed four homes and dozens of electricity pylons near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Palestinian witnesses and an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

"At 4:00 am (0100 GMT) army tractors demolished four homes and 52 electricity pylons in the al-Makhrureh area of Beit Jalla," Mazen al-Azzeh, coordinator of the Popular Campaign to Fight Settlements in Bethlehem, told AFP.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat saluted on Monday the Syrian people in their ongoing uprising against the ruling regime.

He noted in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa magazine: “The resistance in Lebanon must join the Syrian people’s resistance against the regime.”

A Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops early Sunday near the security fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, an army spokesman said.

"A patrol spotted a suspicious figure digging a hole, indicating that he was planting an explosive device," said the spokesman, adding that soldiers had opened fire in his direction.

Israel on Sunday deported a Palestinian woman prisoner who spent 43 days on hunger strike to the Gaza Strip, under a deal that has been criticized by Palestinians.

Eyewitnesses and Palestinian officials told Agence France Presse that Hanaa Shalabi entered Gaza via the Erez border crossing, and was being transferred by ambulance to a local hospital for tests.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat stressed on Saturday that freedom can’t be divisible neither in Palestine nor in Syria.

“Freedom and dignity can’t be divisible, injustice remains wrong,” Jumblat said.

A 20-year-old man was killed and another 51 people injured by Israeli fire on Friday, as thousands rallied across the West Bank and Gaza to mark Land Day, medical sources said.

Demonstrations also took place in annexed east Jerusalem and across Israel, as well as in Jordan, southern Lebanon and Syria to mark the annual event that commemorates the deaths of six Arab Israelis at the hands of Israeli forces during protests against land confiscation in 1976.

One of Beirut’s most well-established bookshops, Librairie El Bourj, is to host the official launch of UAE-based writer, author and communicator Alexander McNabb’s Olives – A Violent Romance from 5pm on Thursday 29th March 2012 with a talk by the author followed by a reading and book signing.

The novel is set in Jordan, where British journalist Paul Stokes moves to live and work on a contract to produce a magazine for the Ministry of Natural Resources. The Israelis are competing for dwindling water resources as Jordan and Palestine face drought. Daoud Dajani has the solution to Jordan’s water problems and is bidding against the British for the privatisation of Jordan’s water network. When Paul befriends Dajani’s sister, Aisha, British intelligence agent Gerald Lynch realises Paul offers access to the man threatening to drain Israel’s water supply and snatch the bid from the British. Blackmailed by Lynch into spying on Dajani, his movements seemingly linked to a series of bombings, Paul is pitched into a terrifying fight for survival that forces him to betray everyone around him. Even the woman he comes to love.

The Toulouse gunman who killed seven people, including three young Jewish children, visited Israel for three days in 2010, Israeli security officials told Agence France Presse on Monday.

They said that Mohamed Merah entered the Jewish state on a French passport in September 2010 through the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan where he was checked and given a tourist visa.

The Israeli foreign ministry decided on Monday to cut contact with the United Nations Human Rights Council after it said last week it would investigate Israeli settlements, a spokesman said.

"There was a decision by the foreign ministry to sever work contacts with the organization," ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told Agence France Presse, adding that Israel had yet to formally inform the council of its decision.