Iran on Tuesday accused arch-rival Israel of attempting to poison the mood against its moderate president-elect Hassan Rowhani, who has raised hope to end a dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called Rowhani "a wolf in sheep's clothing" who would "smile and build a bomb.”

Israel's defense minister on Tuesday confirmed giving Egypt the go-ahead to deploy two battalions in Sinai to tackle militants in a region where deployments are restricted by treaty.

Speaking to army radio, Moshe Yaalon said he had approved a request from the Egyptian army to station one battalion at El-Arish in the north of the peninsula and one at Sharm al-Sheikh in the south.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has bowed to Chinese pressure and barred intelligence officers from testifying in a U.S. lawsuit against the Bank of China, a newspaper reported on Monday.

The Yediot Aharonot, a top-selling daily in Israel, said Netanyahu's actions had irked the United States.

Former U.S. officials called Monday for President Barack Obama to pursue diplomacy with Iran's new president after Israel showed a hard line over Tehran's nuclear program.

In their latest letter to Obama, the ex-policymakers said the election of centrist cleric Hassan Rowhani, who will assume the presidency on August 3, "presents a major potential opportunity."

Israeli police said they detained 15 Bedouin as hundreds of the tribesmen and women marched Monday in the city of Beersheba to protest a government plan to resettle them.

The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, which represents Arab communities in Israel, had called for a day of "angry strikes" including demonstrations in 15 cities to denounce the plan.

Israel's prime minister insisted Sunday that he will not allow "dangerous weapons" to reach Hizbullah, following reports that Israel recently carried out an airstrike in northern Syria against a shipment of advanced missiles.

The airstrike in Latakia reportedly targeted Russian Yakhont anti-ship missiles, one of the types of advanced weapons that Israeli officials have previously said they would not allow to reach Syria. It would be the fourth known airstrike against Syria this year.

Iran is moving "closer and closer" to building a nuclear weapon and Israel may have to act before the United States does, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Sunday.

"They're edging up to the red line. They haven't crossed it yet," Netanyahu said on CBS News's "Face the Nation."

A shell fired from Syria, where insurgents and government troops are locked in fierce fighting, exploded in the Israeli-occupied sector of the Golan Heights plateau on Sunday, an Israeli military spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

"A shell fired from Syria hit an open area near the Israel-Syria border in the northern Golan Heights," the spokeswoman said. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

An Israeli court said Sunday it has jailed for 30 months two senior Hamas members who took refuge inside Red Cross east Jerusalem offices for a year and a half.

The Jerusalem district court issued the sentence as part of a plea bargain in which former Palestinian minister for Jerusalem affairs Khaled Abu Arafeh and Hamas MP Mohammed Totah admitted to "membership of a terror organization" and staying in Israel without permits.

A former Israeli intelligence chief said on Saturday that authorities held a person in secret during the 1970s but implied that the prisoner was no longer in custody.

"Thirty-five years ago, in my post as head of military intelligence, I approved the detention in prison of Prisoner X, in total isolation," Haaretz newspaper quoted Shlomo Gazit as saying in an email.