Israeli deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom threatened on Friday Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah by saying: “We are not keen on battle, but if it is imposed on us, them we will return you Nasrallah to the underground hideout where you will stay for years.”

“The Galilee is prospering and we are spending money on it for it to prosper,” he stated.

Israeli missions in Turkey have stopped working while security measures are implemented in response to threats by Hizbullah, an Israeli diplomatic source said Friday.

"Officially, we are not closed, but practically we are not functioning... because of security problems," the source told Agence France Presse.

A Lebanese military court sentenced a man to death on charges of spying for Israel's Mossad and providing the agency with information on Hizbullah, a judicial official said Friday.

"A military court has sentenced Amin Ibrahim al-Baba to death ... for contacting Israeli intelligence and providing information that aided Israeli attacks on Lebanon," the official told Agence France Presse.

Iranian officials were in contact with their counterparts in Egypt to secure the passage of two warships through the Suez Canal, Tehran's English-language Press TV reported on Thursday.

The vessels intend to transit the canal, the channel's website quoted an unnamed Iranian navy official as saying.

President Michel Suleiman condemned on Thursday Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s recent threat against Lebanon, saying that it was a violation of international law and U.N. Security Council resolution 1701.

The president said that the threat was aimed at lifting the Israeli army and the new Israeli chief of staff’s morale “because he knows full well that entering Lebanon is no loner a walk in the park as demonstrated by the July 2006 war.”

Three Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops early on Thursday in an area near Gaza's northern border with Israel, officials on both sides said.

Adham Abu Selmiya, a spokesman for the Hamas-run emergency services, said the men died after being hit by a tank shell and machine gun fire in an area called Al-Waha which lies close to both the shore and the northern border with Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hizbullah on Wednesday against any attack, after the group's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah threatened to take over the Galilee in northern Israel.

"Nasrallah declared today that he will conquer the Galilee," said Netanyahu. "I have news for him. He won't."

Iran is sending two warships into the Mediterranean Sea, Israel's foreign minister said Wednesday, labeling the act a "provocation" the Jewish state cannot ignore for long.

"Tonight two Iranian warships are supposed to cross the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea on their way to Syria," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, speaking at a conference of American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.

Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday called on his fighters to stand ready to occupy the Galilee area in northern Israel should another war "be imposed on Lebanon."

"I call on the mujahedin of the Islamic Resistance to stand ready to take over the Galilee should a war be imposed on Lebanon," Nasrallah addressed via video link a rally organized by Hizbullah in Beirut's southern suburb to commemorate the group's Martyrs' Day.

Israel's deputy Prime Minister, Dan Meridor, has hoped that “the camp of the radicals” that includes Hizbullah would be defeated in the region.

Dan Meridor, who is also Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Prague that Egyptian protesters' demands for freedom and free election were positive.