Israel will strike back "fiercely" if Syria attacks the Jewish state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday, as the U.S. mulled military action against President Bashar Assad's regime.

"The State of Israel is prepared for every scenario," he said following consultations on the crisis in Syria. "We are not part of the civil war in Syria, but if we detect any attempt to hurt us, we will react, and react fiercely."

Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Avigdor Lieberman said Tuesday that neither Hizbullah nor the Syrian regime were interested in engaging in war with the Jewish state.

"Hizbullah and (Syrian President Bashar) Assad are not interested in a conflict with Israel. They understand the consequences of Israel entering the battlefield and beginning to play an active role," Lieberman told Israeli Army radio.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour on Tuesday telephoned Syrian FM Walid Muallem and discussed with him “the latest developments and threats against Syria,” amid reports of an imminent military strike against the Syrian regime, Lebanon's National News Agency reported.

“This dangerous situation requires an emergency meeting of the (Lebanese) cabinet, or at least a ministerial meeting, to discuss the threats that are being launched against Syria and the possibility of a military strike against it and the direct repercussions on Lebanon,” Mansour told NNA.

Vandals slashed the tires of six cars in an Arab neighborhood of east Jerusalem, a police spokeswoman said on Tuesday morning, in an apparent racist attack.

"The tires of six cars belonging to Arabs were found slashed in Beit Safafa," police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.

A senior Israeli delegation visited the White House Monday for high-level talks on the building Syria crisis and the nuclear showdown with Iran.

Officials said U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice met retired Israeli major general Yaakov Amidror, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top national security adviser.

The United States insisted Monday that no meeting planned as part of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace process had been cancelled, despite claims to the contrary.

"I can assure you that no meeting has been cancelled," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters, after reports a session had been cancelled after Israeli forces shot dead three Palestinians.

Israeli President Shimon Peres called Sunday for an international effort to "take out" chemical weapons in Syria after claims President Bashar Assad's regime used them in a deadly attack.

"The time has come to make a joint effort to take out all the chemical weapons from Syria," Peres said, without elaborating if he envisioned this being achieved through military strikes or otherwise.

A successful outcome to the U.S.-brokered negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians would be like a "thunderbolt" for peace in the crisis-ridden Middle East, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Saturday.

"Even if we speak of other neighboring countries -- the dramatic conflict in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt -- the fact remains that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is one of the issues, perhaps the central one, for the region," he said in the West Bank city of Ramallah, after meeting Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday criticized Washington for its response to his claims of Israel's involvement in the Egypt crisis.

The Turkish leader on Tuesday accused the Jewish state of being behind the military-backed ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi last month.

Egypt partially reopened the Rafah crossing with Gaza on Saturday, a Hamas official said, more than a week after it closed the strip's only land passage that bypasses Israel.

Maher Abu Sabha, director general of border crossing for Gaza's Islamist Hamas government, said the terminal opened in the morning and would operate every day for four hours "for humanitarian cases and holders of foreign passports".