Israel is tightening security in flashpoint mixed Jewish-Muslim areas to ward off possible unrest this weekend when two important religious festivals coincide for the first time in three decades.

The Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur begins on Friday evening, followed on Saturday by Muslim Eid al-Adha, against a backdrop of high inter-religious tension over the seven-week Gaza war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back at the White House after Washington criticized Israeli plans to build thousands more settler homes in east Jerusalem, Israeli media reported on Thursday.

Public radio quoted Netanyahu as telling U.S. President Barack Obama in talks in Washington Wednesday to "study the facts and details before making statements" about the settlement plan.

Israel is to press ahead with the planned construction of 2,610 settler homes in annexed east Jerusalem, a watchdog said Wednesday, with the move angering Palestinian leaders.

The housing units, which have been slated for construction since 2012 in the neighborhood of Givat Hamatos, were given final approval last week, Peace Now said in a statement.

The Palestinians are asking the U.N. Security Council to set November 2016 as the deadline for ending the Israeli occupation, according to a draft resolution obtained by Agence France-Presse on Wednesday. 

The draft, circulated to council members, follows Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' address last week to the U.N. General Assembly in which he called for a fast-track to statehood.

Months after the collapse of U.S.-led efforts to advance Middle East peace, experts say Palestinians and Israelis have finally agreed on at least one thing -- further talks would be futile.

And, as has so often been the case in the intractable conflict, neither side looks set to propose any kind of meaningful alternative.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has complained U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon that a probe by the world body into the Gaza war is one-sided, his foreign ministry said Wednesday.

At a meeting with Ban on Tuesday in New York, Netanyahu charged that the U.N. Human Rights Council "is not focusing its inquiry on Hamas, which used U.N. facilities in order to fire at Israel," a ministry statement said.

Iran on Tuesday rejected as baseless accusations leveled by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it poses a greater threat to the world than the Islamic State jihadist group.

Speaking on Monday at the U.N. General Assembly, Netanyahu said that "to defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear state power is to win the battle and lose the war."

Israeli settlers forcefully took over 25 apartments in Arab east Jerusalem Tuesday, residents and Palestinian leaders said, with the new occupants claiming they had legitimately bought the properties.

The incident led to clashes between Arab residents and Jewish settlers in the Silwan neighborhood, which is right outside Jerusalem's Old City, near the flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque compound.

A senior Palestinian official on Tuesday likened Benjamin Netanyahu to the leader of the Islamic State group, after the Israeli prime minister compared Hamas to the jihadist organization.

"Netanyahu is trying to disseminate fear of the Islamic State led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but Netanyahu forgets that he himself leads the Jewish state," said Saeb Erakat, the Palestinians' chief negotiator in peace talks with Israel.

The Palestine Liberation Organization said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blatantly manipulated the facts when he compared Hamas with the Islamic State and Iran in a U.N. speech on Monday.

"Netanyahu's speech at the U.N. was a blatant manipulation of facts and attempted at misleading the audience through a combination of hate language, slander and argument of obfuscation," PLO executive member Hanan Ashrawi said in a statement in English.