Israel's hard-right economy minister apologized Wednesday for public attacks on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over U.S.-backed Middle East peace talks.

"There are those who are trying to spin what is a debate about the future and security of our country as a personal attack that never happened," Naftali Bennett said at an education conference at the Dead Sea.

Israel's top court was considering two Palestinian appeals Wednesday against the planned route of the West Bank security barrier, which locals say will cut villagers off from their land.

During the morning, the Supreme Court heard a case lodged by residents of Beit Jala, southwest of Jerusalem, where the barrier threatens to separate them from their olive groves and divide the local Christian community.

Iran said Tuesday that Israel is using Tehran's nuclear program to distract from its "crimes" against the Palestinians, during a rare visit by an official from the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

Israel, along with Western countries, has long accused Iran of covertly pursuing nuclear weapons alongside its civilian program -- charges denied by Tehran -- and the Jewish state criticized a landmark nuclear deal reached with world powers in November.

A Jerusalem court sentenced an ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist Israeli Jew to four-and-a-half years prison Tuesday for attempting to spy for arch-foe Iran, a court document read.

Yitzhak Bergel, a member of the radical Neturei Karta group that opposes the existence of the state of Israel, admitted as part of a plea bargain to having contacted the Iranian embassy in Berlin in 2011 to offer intelligence, and staying in contact with Iranian diplomats after returning to Israel.

Conflicting reports emerged Monday about an alleged Israeli airstrike on Russian-made missiles in the Syrian port city of Latakia, amid official Syrian and Israeli silence over the unconfirmed news.

The pro-Damascus Russia Today television quoted Latakia residents as saying that they did not hear any blasts overnight and that the powerful S-300 missiles in question would have produced extremely loud explosions had they been targeted in an alleged raid.

Israeli authorities on Monday demolished four Palestinian homes in annexed east Jerusalem that had been built without construction permits, police and residents said.

A total of 20 people lived in the four buildings, two of them located in the Issawiya neighborhood and two in Beit Hanina, occupants told AFP.

Comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the World Economic Forum make it clear he is against the establishment of a Palestinian state, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat has said.

"Anyone who says they want the settlers to remain is actually saying they don't want the establishment of a Palestinian state," Erakat said in remarks published Monday in Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam.

Israeli troops shot and seriously wounded a Palestinian man close to the Gaza side of the border on Monday, emergency services in the Hamas-ruled territory said.

Spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told AFP the 34-year-old was shot east of Deir al-Balah in the center of the strip, without giving his name.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani said Monday that extremism rose in Lebanon over the failure to resolve the file of Islamists held in Roumieh prison and attempts to topple Dar al-Fatwa's “moderate role.”

“The file of Islamists has been one of the reasons for the rise of extremism,” he said in reference to suspects, who were arrested during Fatah al-Islam’s battles with the Lebanese army in the northern refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in 2007.

Hackers attacked Israeli computers including one used by the defense ministry department dealing with civilians in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli data protection expert said on Monday.

"At the beginning of this month a number of mails were sent to a number of companies in Israel, including security organizations," Aviv Raff, chief technology officer at Israeli cyber security firm Seculert told army radio.