Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he is opposed to freezing construction in settlements as a means to extend U.S.-sponsored peace talks with Palestinians.

Such a freeze "would serve nothing," Netanyahu told public radio.

A ship allegedly carrying advanced rockets from Iran to Gaza that was intercepted by the Israeli navy arrived Saturday in the Red Sea port of Eilat, an Agence France Presse photographer said.

Israeli naval commandos seized the vessel on Wednesday in the Red Sea between Eritrea and Sudan, with the military saying it was carrying an Iranian shipment of M-302 rockets destined for the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday raised the possibility that some Jewish settlements would remain under Palestinian sovereignty if the two sides struck a peace deal.

"It is clear that some of the settlements will not be part of a (peace) deal," Netanyahu, wrapping up a visit to the United States, told Israeli television.

Thousands of Hamas supporters rallied in the Gaza Strip on Friday to protest against a Cairo court decision banning the Palestinian Islamist movement from operating in Egypt.

Waving Egyptian flags and Hamas banners, the demonstrators gathered after Friday prayers and then marched to the former Egyptian embassy which has been closed since 2007.

Israeli settlers in the West Bank stoned the car of a Palestinian photographer working for Agence France Presse, slightly injuring him, as he was on his way to cover a story Friday.

The photographer said several of around 100 settlers who were gathered at the side of the road threw stones at his car, damaging the vehicle and lightly injuring him in the face and hands.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Jordan on Friday for talks with King Abdullah II on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, a U.S. spokeswoman said.

The brief stop in the Red Sea port of Aqaba, where the talks were held, was not previously announced.

Iran's foreign minister on Friday sharply rejected an Israeli allegation that Tehran tried to ship missiles to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, calling it a "lie".

Israel has said it captured a Gaza-bound ship Wednesday carrying dozens of Syrian-made rockets "capable of striking anywhere in Israel".

Egypt said on Thursday it stopped a delegation of women activists from reaching the Gaza Strip as it feared for their safety while travelling through the restive Sinai Peninsula.

About 100 women from Europe and the United States intended to go to the Palestinian enclave through Egypt's Rafah border crossing to celebrate International Women's Day on Saturday.

Israel's settler population in the occupied West Bank increased by 4.2 percent in 2013, interior ministry figures show, as U.S.-backed peace talks with the Palestinians falter over the settlement issue.

The number of settlers living in the West Bank rose to 375,000 in January 2014 from 360,000 at the same time the year before, according to statistics Agence France Presse obtained on Thursday from the ministry.

An Egyptian court ban on Hamas activities could push the increasingly isolated Palestinian Islamist movement into another battle with Israel, analysts say.

The latest move marked a further deterioration in ties between Egypt and Hamas, which has close links to the Muslim Brotherhood of deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and is now the target of a sweeping crackdown by the military-installed government.