Italian deputies on Friday approved two resolutions calling on the government to support the goal of a Palestinian state but, in a move welcomed by Israel, stopped short of supporting recognition now.

A motion in support of recognizing Palestine and another opposing any steps in that direction were voted down.

Israel allowed two Gaza-based Palestinian ministers to travel to the West Bank for a cabinet meeting Thursday for the first time since the unity government took office in June, officials said.

Housing minister Mufid Hasayneh and justice minister Salim al-Saqa passed through the Israeli-controlled Erez border crossing and arrived in Ramallah, government spokesman Ihab Bseiso told AFP.

The number of new homes under construction in Jewish settlements on the Israel-occupied West Bank rose last year by 40 percent, the Peace Now anti-settlements watchdog said Monday.

The Israeli group said the construction of 3,100 "residential units" began last year in West Bank settlements, while 4,485 tenders for construction there and in east Jerusalem settlement districts were launched in 2014 -- "a record high for at least a decade."

Israel on Monday cut off power to two Palestinian cities in the northern West Bank for an hour over unpaid electricity bills, officials on both sides said. 

The power cut took place in the northern city of Nablus as well as in Jenin, local Palestinian officials told Agence France-Presse saying thousands of homes were affected by the cut which Israel had warned of in advance. 

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman Monday hailed a U.S. jury's order for Palestinian authorities to pay $128 million in damages to American victims of 2002-2004 attacks in Israel as a "moral victory."

"This decision constitutes above all a moral victory for the state of Israel and for victims of terrorism," Lieberman said.

The lawyer of exiled Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan, being tried in absentia on corruption charges, accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Sunday of "exploiting" justice by raiding offices of two associates.

The former security chief, who was expelled from Fatah in 2011 and now lives in the United Arab Emirates, has not been in court for any of the hearings in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

A young Palestinian stabbed an ultra-Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem on Sunday before being apprehended by the city's mayor and his bodyguard, police and the municipality said.

Mayor Nir Barkat said that as he was driving past city hall, his team saw "a terrorist with a knife."

The Israeli Supreme Court overruled Wednesday a ban on a firebrand Arab-Israeli MP and an extreme right-wing Jewish activist from running in next month's election, an official said.

Last week, the Central Elections Committee (CEC) barred MP Haneen Zuabi, a regular critic of Israel's right-wing government, deeming her to be "hostile to the Jewish state."

The Palestinian Authority condemned Saturday the "heinous murder" of three American Muslims of Palestinian origin who were shot dead this week in what it described as an act of "terrorism."

The murder of sisters Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, and Yusor Mohammad, 21, along with Yusor's husband Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, in North Carolina was a "dangerous sign of racism and religious extremism," Palestinian official Wafa news agency quoted the foreign ministry as saying. 

A 14-year-old girl who has become a symbol for Palestinian minors arrested by Israel insisted on Saturday after serving a 45-day sentence that she had been unjustly imprisoned.

"I do not admit to any crime: I was not throwing stones -- I had no knife on me," Malak al-Khatib told Agence France-Presse.