Qatar on Tuesday launched a project to build 1,000 homes in the Gaza Strip to house Palestinians displaced by last summer's war between Hamas and Israel.

The Gulf state, which hosts the exiled leadership of Gaza's Islamist rulers, was the largest single donor at an October conference in Cairo to raise funds to help rebuild the blockaded territory.

Israelis awaiting their second general election in two years may be wearied by aggressive voting campaigns, but candidates in next week's snap ballot have found a brand new target demographic.

More than 10,000 French Jews have moved to Israel since the 2013 election, and polls on March 17 will be the first where parliamentary hopefuls have directly canvassed support among French voters.

King Abdullah II of Jordan warned Tuesday that an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal was essential for combating Islamic extremists, saying the conflict served as a rallying cry for jihadists.

Abdullah told the European Parliament that the battle against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria was "first and foremost" a fight for Muslim nations to carry out.

An Israeli unit violated on Tuesday the Blue Line that demarcates the border between Lebanon and Israel, announced the army in a statement.

It said that an eight-member unit crossed the Blue Line near al-Bastra farm in the occupied Shebaa Farms.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun has promised to hold accountable corrupt officials if he were elected a president, denying that he has made certain political concessions and stressing that he is part of the resistance axis against jihadists and Israel.

“If I were elected president, I would deploy the accountability system and consolidate judicial inspection,” Aoun told al-Akhbar newspaper in a lengthy interview published on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's main challenger in March 17 elections, the center-left Zionist Union, unveiled its platform Sunday with an emphasis on ending Israel's "diplomatic isolation."

Its two planks for the legislative polls are "to end the diplomatic isolation of Israel" and halt the rising cost of living, the alliance between the Labor party of Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni's centrist HaTnuah said in a statement.

A Palestinian fisherman was shot dead by Israeli forces on Saturday off the coast of the Gaza Strip, a spokesman for the Palestinian health services said.

The 32-year-old died in hospital in Gaza City after he and two other fishermen in the same boat were fired upon by the Israeli navy.

In a tunnel dug deep underneath the besieged Gaza Strip, masked gunmen from Islamic Jihad ferry rockets and mortars back and forth, preparing for the next conflict with Israel.

Six months ago, the Palestinian militant group emerged battered and bruised from a 50-day conflict with Israel, where it fought alongside fellow Islamist movement Hamas, which controls Gaza.

As Israel readies for a general election, the issue of peace with the Palestinians has been noticeably absent from debate. But a group of women is seeking to change that.

Braving intermittent rain to stand for hours outside Israel's parliament building in Jerusalem this week, thousands of women, young and old, religious and secular, Arab and Jewish, chanted and waved placards, demanding a solution to the conflict be found, or at least discussed, by politicians.

U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Sigrid Kaag has said that Hizbullah violated Security Council Resolution 1701 when it attacked Israeli troops in the occupied Shebaa Farms area in January.

“The attack on the Israeli convoy is a clear violation of the cessation of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel,” Kaag told An Nahar newspaper in an interview published on Friday.