Israeli police used force on Saturday to break up a Palestinian protest march in occupied east Jerusalem, injuring several people including two journalists, news photographers said.

Several demonstrators and four journalists -- among them a photographer from Agence France-Presse and another from Reuters -- were slightly injured by projectiles fired by police during the incident, near the walled Old City's Damascus Gate.

The chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff is heading to Israel for talks on mutual strategic interests after Israel's defense minister upset Washington with remarks criticizing U.S. foreign policy.

"General Martin Dempsey will be departing this weekend for a visit to Israel," an Israeli military statement said.

A senior Palestinian official said a release by Israel of Arab prisoners would not go ahead on Saturday as envisaged but he hoped there would be only a short delay.

"Today the prisoners will not be released... maybe in the coming days," Issa Qaraqae, the minister of prisoner affairs, told Agence France Presse.

The Gaza Strip's land border with Egypt reopened Saturday after a 50-day closure, but only for three days and then just for special cases, its Islamist rulers Hamas said.

Passage to Egypt will be limited to those seeking medical treatment, students going to their places of study, foreigners and in cases deemed as humanitarian, Hamas's interior ministry said.

Israeli troops on Friday shot what the military said were “infiltrators” trying to breach a security fence from the Syrian-controlled side of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

"Soldiers detected two armed suspects infiltrating into Israel and tampering with the infrastructure of the Israeli-Syrian border of the Golan Heights," a military statement said,

Israel's refusal to free a final batch of Arab prisoners Saturday is another obstacle to U.S. efforts to broker peace, a senior official in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party said.

Under the deal that relaunched peace talks last July, Israel agreed to release 104 Arabs held since before the 1993 Oslo peace accords in exchange for the Palestinians not pressing their statehood claims at the United Nations.

Israel has told the Palestinians it will not be making the fourth release of prisoners they had been expecting alongside U.S.-brokered peace talks, a senior Palestinian official said on Friday.

"The Israeli government has informed us through the American mediator that it will not abide with its commitment to release the fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday 29," Jibril Rajub told Agence France Presse.

Pope Francis will pray side-by-side with Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew in Jerusalem in a powerful sign of Christian unity during his May visit to Holy Land, the Vatican said on Thursday.

The prayer will take place in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over the spots widely believed to be the sites of the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

Israeli President Shimon Peres flies to Vienna on Sunday for talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency head, the pan-European security watchdog OSCE and Austrian leaders, his office said.

Peres and Yukiya Amano, director general of the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, will discuss its "role as the professional body leading the effort to put the brakes on Iran's nuclear program," his office said in a statement Thursday.

Turkey hopes to soon close a difficult chapter with Israel sparked by a deadly commando raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla of aid ships in 2010, Turkish foreign minister told Agence France Presse.

Nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists were killed in the Israeli assault, sparking a major crisis between the long-time regional allies and compensation claims from the victims' families.