Israeli police used tear gas and rubber bullets against stone-throwing Palestinians in the Issawiya district of annexed east Jerusalem on Sunday, Israeli police and an Agence France Presse journalist said.

"Five Palestinians were arrested after attacking a police and border guard patrol with stones," police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

A commission tasked with drafting a new Syrian constitution submitted a draft charter to President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, the official SANA news agency reported.

"Assad on Sunday received a copy of the new draft constitution from the head of the national committee charged with drafting a new constitution for the Syrian Arab Republic," SANA said.

The Syrian community in Lebanon on Sunday staged a demonstration outside the Chinese embassy in the Beirut district of Bir Hassan to hail Beijing's veto at the Security Council that blocked U.N. action against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Carrying Syrian flags and portraits of Assad, the demonstrators shouted slogans in support of the Syrian leader and denounced a number of Western and Arab countries critical of the Assad government.

Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei on Sunday warned the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against any "compromise" in its fight against Tehran's nemesis Israel, his official website reported.

"Always be wary of infiltration by the compromisers in a resistance organization, which will gradually weaken it," Khamenei told the visiting Hamas Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniya, according to the leader.ir website.

Jordan's powerful Muslim Brotherhood on Sunday called for "jihad" against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and support for a rebel army, saying it is "an Islamic duty."

"This duty requires all Muslims to support the (rebel) Free Syrian Army against the aggression of the regime's criminal and brutal forces," Brotherhood leader Hammam Saeed was quoted as saying in a statement on the group's website.

The Arab League said it agreed on Sunday to open contacts with Syria's opposition and to ask the United Nations to form a joint peacekeeping force to the unrest-swept country in moves swiftly rejected by Syria.

Arab diplomats "will open channels of communication with the Syrian opposition and offer full political and financial support, urging (the opposition) to unify its ranks," it said in a statement obtained by Agence France Presse.

Al-Qaida's Yemen branch, strongly active in the south of the impoverished nation, executed two of its members on Sunday accusing them of spying on its operations, witnesses said.

The pair were accused of planting tracking devices in the vehicles of fellow al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula militants and of providing Yemeni authorities, and the Saudi and U.S. intelligence services, with information.

Head of the Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc, ex-PM Fouad Saniora, on Sunday strongly condemned the latest deadly clashes in the northern city of Tripoli, stressing that the Mustaqbal Movement rejects “any act that could lead to unrest or a civil strife among the Lebanese, from whichever side it comes.”

Hitting back at those accusing Mustaqbal of arming itself, Saniora said “those voicing these remarks are trying to justify their armament and possession of arms,” noting that the movement is “against any form of armament” and that it wants the state to be in full control of security in the country.

Hizbullah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem on Sunday hailed the army for “protecting the Lebanese border” and rejected alleged efforts to transform Lebanon into a launchpad for settling political scores.

During a ceremony held in the Ghobeiri neighborhood of Beirut’s southern suburbs, Qassem “saluted the Lebanese army that is safeguarding the Lebanese border, particularly in the northern areas.”

Pope Benedict XVI has called on the Syrian leadership to respond urgently to the "legitimate" demands of its people who have been facing an increasingly bloody crackdown by President Bashar Assad's regime.

Benedict called for all sides, but especially Syria's political leaders, to enter into talks to end the uprising.