The Palestinians on Sunday dismissed Israel's welcome of a Quartet call for the resumption of peace talks, saying the peace proposal requires Israel to halt settlement construction.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat, speaking to Agence France Presse from Cairo, said a statement issued by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office was "an exercise in deceiving the international community."

Israeli's Interior Ministry said on Tuesday that its district planning committee had approved a plan for 1,100 new homes in the east Jerusalem settlement neighborhood of Gilo.

"The Israeli interior ministry announced on Tuesday that the plan for 1,100 new housing units in Gilo had passed its district planning committee, and will now be available for public objections for 60 days," a ministry statement said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested in an interview published Tuesday that he would not seek to lure the Palestinians back to peace talks by renewing a freeze on settlement building.

"We already gave at the office," Netanyahu told The Jerusalem Post, referring to a 10-month partial settlement freeze that expired in late September 2010.

Egyptian fire fighters have managed to control a blaze at the site of a gas pipeline to Israel which was attacked overnight, the official MENA news agency said on Tuesday.

At least three gunmen in a van opened fire on a gas installation before an explosion hit the pipeline near the town of al-Arish in the north of the Sinai Peninsula, witnesses said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday he is ready to accept a Quartet plan that foresees a peace deal with the Palestinians by the end of 2012.

"If the Quartet calls for the resumption of direct negotiations without preconditions, I think it's an important thing," Netanyahu said in an interview with Channel 10 from the United States.

Speaker Nabih Berri on Friday lashed out at a speech given by Israeli Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly, Saying it was filled with “contempt” and “grudge.”

“Hizbullah doesn’t preside over the U.N. Security Council nor do President Michel Suleiman and Prime Minister (Najib Miqati), but Lebanon does the state that was slaughtered (by Israel) in 1996,” Berri said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in New York Wednesday to attend the U.N. General Assembly, overshadowed by a Palestinian bid to seek membership of the world body as a state.

"The prime minister has landed," an Israeli official waiting to greet him at the airport told Agence France Presse. Netanyahu was due to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama within hours to discuss the looming Palestinian showdown.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday that he isn’t after a “confrontation” with the United States or any other country over a bid for U.N. membership of a Palestinian state.

“The Palestinian people have the right to have a recognized state in the international community. This is our right,” Abbas told An Nahar.

Jordan's King Abdullah II has warned that Israel's stance in peace talks with the Palestinian is fuelling instability in the Middle East, in remarks published Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal.

"If we can't get the Israelis and Palestinians together in this next couple of days, then what signal is that for the future process?" King Abdullah asked in a WSJ interview in New York ahead of the U.N. General Assembly.

The Palestinians will not be able to secure a Security Council majority in favor of their bid to become a United Nations member state, Israel's cabinet secretary Tzvi Hauser predicted on Tuesday.

Speaking on Israeli military radio, Hauser said the Palestinians would fail to obtain the nine yes votes they need to keep alive their hopes of becoming a member state on the lines that existed before the 1967 Six Day War.