Syrian rebel fighters announced on Tuesday their withdrawal from the historic Christian town of Maalula near Damascus, two days after they took control of it.

"To ensure no blood is spilled and that the properties of the people of Maalula are kept safe, the Free Syrian Army announces that the town of Maalula will be kept out of the struggle between the FSA and the regime army," a rebel spokesman said in a video posted online.

Israel's army has decided to close an investigation into the killing of a Palestinian activist during a West Bank demonstration in 2009, an Israeli rights group said Tuesday.

According to B'Tselem, the military's prosecutor general had decided to close the case for lack of evidence.

Syria wants to join the chemical weapons ban treaty and is ready to give other countries and the United Nations access to its arsenal, Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said Tuesday.

"We are ready to state where the chemical weapons are, to halt production of chemical weapons and show these installations to representatives of Russia, other countries and the U.N.," Muallem said in a statement sent to Russia's Interfax news agency.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday the United States should renounce the option of using force in Syria to allow checks on Damascus' chemical weapons to go ahead.

"It all makes sense and can work if the U.S. side and all those who support it renounce the use of force," he said according to Russian television.

Tunisian prisons and detention centers are facing the risk of "terrorist" acts, the prison officers union said on Tuesday, with several attacks having reportedly been foiled already.

"The Tunisian authorities have been notified by the international organization Interpol about the existence of a terrorist threat against the prisons," the union's secretary general Olfa Ayar told a news conference.

Russia will send the United States details of a proposal to secure Syria's chemical weapons stockpile later Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said, as he urged Damascus to seize the change for "peace."

The details would come during the "course of the day," Kerry said, shortly after talking with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. But he insisted that any plan must contain "consequences" if it turns out to be a delaying tactic to avoid U.S. military action.

Russia clashed once again with Western powers Tuesday as envoys drafted a U.N. resolution to add muscle to a plan to strip Syria of its chemical weapons.

U.S. President Barack Obama maintained his threat to launch military strikes against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, even while cranking up the diplomatic pressure on Moscow.

Russia's dramatic intervention in the Syria crisis has succeeded in putting military action on hold because that suits almost everyone but the rebels fighting Bashar Assad's regime, analysts said Tuesday.

Despite widespread skepticism over whether Assad can be trusted to hand over his chemical weapons arsenal, the United States and its European allies have agreed to give Russia time to try and achieve that goal, at the risk of bolstering the Syrian dictator's grip on power.

"Phew, that was close," was the reaction of shop-owner Nabil, sharing the relief of Damascenes as a Russian proposal appeared to put U.S. strikes against Syria on hold at the 11th hour.

"I was at the law courts and there was a general euphoria in the air," said a prominent lawyer, declining to give his name.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Tuesday welcomed a proposal for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons arsenal and called for it to be finalized "as quickly as possible".

"I welcome the proposal for the Syrian regime to hand over its chemical weapons and to place them under international control," Ashton said in a statement.