The employment minister of Canada, a strong supporter of Israel, has waded into the spat over Oxfam breaking with U.S. actress Scarlett Johansson for endorsing an Israeli soft drink firm that operates in the occupied West Bank.

Minister Jason Kenney, who is also minister of multiculturalism in Canada, extended an ironic thank you to Oxfam for bringing the Israeli firm SodaStream to his attention.

An Israeli bulldozer crossed on Tuesday the technical fence off the southern town of Rmeish under the protection of a military unit, the state-run National News Agency reported.

The bulldozer was to carry out scraping activities near the U.N.-drawn Blue Line, NNA said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry came under further attack Monday by Israeli hawks who accuse him of manipulating the threat of an economic boycott to pressure Israel into peace concessions.

The latest war of words between the two allies erupted Saturday after Kerry warned that Israel was facing a growing campaign of delegitimization which would likely worsen if peace talks with the Palestinians collapsed.

Israel has offered Turkey $20 million in compensation to the families of those killed and wounded in its botched 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, Haaretz newspaper reported on Monday.

Citing unnamed Western diplomats briefed on ongoing negotiations with Ankara, the daily said Turkey had yet to respond to the Israeli offer.

The Hamas rulers of Gaza have withdrawn a special security force tasked with preventing rocket launches at Israel from their position near the border, a security source said on Sunday.

"The field forces that are posted near the border with Israel were withdrawn yesterday evening to protest the latest escalation and Israeli attacks against Gaza," a security source told Agence France Presse.

Five officers from Israel's Mossad spy agency and three Egyptians will stand trial on Wednesday on charges of spying for the Jewish state, judicial sources said.

Egyptian prosecutors have accused the eight of espionage and supplying Israel with information impacting Egypt's national security, the sources said on Sunday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected remarks by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warning of a growing boycott threat against the Jewish state if peace talks fail.

"Attempts to impose a boycott on the State of Israel are immoral and unjust. Moreover, they will not achieve their goal," he said at the weekly cabinet meeting.

Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid has decided to suspend the transfer of public funds to West Bank settlements pending a probe into their alleged misuse, his office said.

The move announced late Saturday was not expected to affect controversial plans for settlement expansion, which the Palestinians view as a major obstacle to U.S.-backed peace talks relaunched last year.

An Egyptian jihadist group said Saturday that it fired a rocket at the Red Sea resort of Eilat which was intercepted by Israeli air defenses, its second in a fortnight.

Al-Qaida inspired Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), which is based just across the border from Israel in Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula, threatened to follow Friday's foiled rocket fire with further attacks.

The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories Friday criticized Israel's demolition of 36 homes in the Jordan Valley and urged a halt to such actions in the West Bank.

Hundreds of activists, meanwhile, staged an overnight demonstration in the Jordan Valley region.