A treaty laying down international rules for the $85 billion dollar global arms trade goes into force on Wednesday with campaigners vowing to make sure it is strictly implemented.

The United States -- by far the world's largest arms producer and exporter -- has signed the treaty, but has yet to ratify it. 

Eight Palestinians from annexed east Jerusalem were indicted on Monday for inciting anti-Jewish violence and supporting "terror" in postings on Facebook, a justice ministry spokeswoman said.

The eight men, aged 18-45, were charged at Jerusalem Magistrate's Court with "incitement to violence or terror and supporting a terrorist group" on Facebook, a ministry statement read.

Barely four months after a bloody conflict battered Gaza, experts warn that a new war could be in the offing if reconstruction is not accelerated and Palestinian divisions remain.

Since the end of the deadly 50-day war between Israel and Hamas, which killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians and 73 in Israel, little has changed on the ground in Gaza.

The Syrian army has claimed it shot down an Israeli reconnaissance drone flying near the occupied Golan Heights, state media said Monday.

"A military source announced on Sunday night that an Israeli unmanned Skylark-1 model drone had been shot down in Quneitra province, close to the village of Hader" near the Golan Heights, the official Sana news agency said.

Speaker Nabih Berri has said that the cabinet is expected to discuss soon oil exploration decrees that have been left in the government's drawers over political differences.

In remarks published in local newspapers on Monday, Berri reiterated that the exploration file “has been put on the right track.”

The Israeli parliament's finance committee on Sunday voted through $3.3 million (2.7 million euros) to build a tourist center at a settlement in the occupied West Bank, a statement said.

An Egyptian court has jailed a Suez Canal shipping services manager for 10 years on charges of spying for Israel about naval movements through the strategic waterway, state media reported.

The court in the canal city of Port Said also handed down life sentences in absentia to two Israelis it found guilty of being the Egyptian's handlers, the official MENA news agency reported late Saturday.

Israel police rounded up eight Jewish extremists from a racist anti-Arab organization overnight, a spokeswoman said early Sunday, in the second such swoop targeting the group within a week.

The suspects were rounded up in a series of raids across central and southern Israel and the occupied West Bank, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

Israeli air planes struck targets in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses and the army said early Saturday, hours after a rocket from the Palestinian enclave hit the Jewish state.

A spokesman for Gaza's health ministry said there were no casualties in the attack, the first air strike by Israel on the Palestinian enclave since the summer truce that ended the deadly 50-day war between the sides.

The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution Friday asking Israel to pay Lebanon over $850 million in damages for an oil spill caused by an Israeli air force attack on oil storage tanks during its war with Hizbullah in July 2006.

The assembly voted 170-6 in favor of the resolution, with three abstentions. Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia, Micronesia and Marshall Islands voted "no."