Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Paris Wednesday to discuss peace talks with Israel, U.S. and Palestinian officials said Monday.

The top U.S. diplomat has spent months trying to get the two sides to agree on a framework for resolving their decades-old conflict, but the negotiations have shown little sign of progress, with each side blaming the other.

Iran's ambassador to Moscow on Monday said Russia could build the Islamic republic a second nuclear power reactor in exchange for massive oil shipments that have raised grave concern in Washington.

Ambassador Mehdi Sanaei said the two close trading partners have been negotiating Iran's delivery of hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day since a meeting at a regional summit in September between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his counterpart Hassan Rouhani.

Israeli President Simon Peres on Monday hailed remarks by Mahmoud Abbas on the Palestinian refugee issue which he said showed the Palestinian president's "seriousness about reaching peace."

"I was happy to hear him," Peres's office quoted him as saying at the start of a meeting with Peruvian President Ollanta Humala.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday he was not looking "to flood Israel" with returning Palestinian refugees, at a rare meeting with 250 Israeli students at his West Bank headquarters.

"Propaganda says Abu Mazen wants to flood Israel with five million refugees to destroy the state of Israel," he told the group at his Muqataa presidential compound in Ramallah, referring to himself by his nickname.

Gaza's ruling Hamas movement has ruled out the idea of international troops being stationed in a future Palestinian state under a peace deal with Israel.

"From time to time we hear people making offers during the negotiations, primarily about the idea of an international force following the retreat of the (Israeli) occupier," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement published on Saturday.

Israeli troops fired tear gas and live bullets at Palestinians throwing stones Friday near the border fence in northern Gaza, the army said, with Palestinian medics saying 17 men were wounded.

Clashes are common on Fridays, with regular protests near the border in support of Gaza farmers who say troops uprooted their trees to create a buffer zone.

Thousands of young Israeli hardliners marched Thursday to demand the government build new settler homes in E1, a highly sensitive strip of West Bank land near Jerusalem.

Police said more than 6,000 people, almost all of them teenagers, joined the march which began in Maaleh Adumim settlement and ended at E1 - an undeveloped stretch of land just to the west, which borders annexed east Jerusalem.

Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman was back in her native city of Jerusalem on Thursday shooting for her directorial debut, to the annoyance of the local ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

The Hollywood actress, who was born in Jerusalem, is directing a film adaptation of "A Tale of Love and Darkness," an award-winning 2002 novel by Israel's best known writer, Amos Oz.

Israeli newspapers bristled on Thursday after the European Parliament president criticized the Gaza Strip blockade and suggested that Israelis received four times more water than Palestinians.

The spat, which erupted on Wednesday after the far-right Jewish Home party stormed out of parliament in protest during a speech by Martin Schultz, made the front pages of Israel's main newspapers.

Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian man near the border fence in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, the Gaza health ministry said.

"Ibrahim Suleiman Mansur, 26, died after he was shot by Israeli occupation forces while he was collecting gravel... east of Gaza City," ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told Agence France Presse.