Israel's deputy foreign minister on Wednesday accused Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas of seeking "unilateral" moves to seek statehood at the expense of direct peace talks.

Abbas "is in no hurry to restart negotiations, despite the pressures on him, because he thinks that the unilateral path will get him further and that way he won't have to pay a political price," Zeev Elkin said on public radio.

Israeli bulldozers demolished four homes on Tuesday in an area of the Jordan Valley just north of Jericho that is supposed to be under full Palestinian control, the family and the city's Palestinian governor said.

The Israeli defense ministry confirmed the demolitions in Al-Nuweima but did not specify whether the houses lay in so-called Area A of the occupied West Bank, lands on which the Palestinians are supposed to enjoy full civil and security control.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday Moscow had not yet delivered its sophisticated S-300 missiles to the Damascus regime despite hints from Syrian President Bashar Assad that such shipments had already been made.

"The contract was signed several years ago. It has not been realized yet," Putin said at a joint press conference with EU leaders. "We do not want to upset the balance in the region."

Israeli fighter jets on Monday released missile-deflecting heat balloons off the southern town of Naqoura within Lebanon's territorial waters, state-run National News Agency reported.

Earlier, al-Jadeed television said the warplanes released around 10 balloons.

Russia cannot deliver advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to the Syrian regime before 2014, Israel's defense minister asserted on Monday.

"We are following this matter with concern, but no deliveries have taken place. If they do take place, it will not be before next year," Moshe Yaalon told the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and defense, in comments reported by army radio.

Rami Hamdallah, the Nablus academic who has been tasked by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas with forming a new Ramallah-based government, is seen by Israel as a moderate pragmatist, commentators said on Monday.

Israel gave no official response to the announcement late Sunday that Hamdallah would take over as premier after Salam Fayyad stood down, but Israeli pundits described him as a figure who would be acceptable to the West and would not pose any internal threat to Abbas.

Around 100 people took part in a demonstration outside the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv on Sunday to demand the resignation of Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"Erdogan resign", "Democracy for Turkey", chanted the protesters, many of them Israelis of Turkish origin, in the demonstration at which no incidents were reported.

Iran has dismantled a "terror network" backed by Israel's Mossad intelligence services which planned to disrupt the upcoming presidential election in the Islamic republic, the state broadcaster said on Sunday.

"The intelligence ministry has identified and arrested the members of this terror network, and confiscated their weapons," IRIB said on its website, quoting a statement by the ministry.

MP Mohammed Raad, head of Loyalty to Resistance parliamentary bloc, stressed Sunday that Hizbullah is fighting in Syria's Qusayr against the same “Zionist plot” it had confronted in southern Lebanon.

“It is important to realize the importance of martyrs during this period, so that some people don't confuse things and think that the rifle of the resistance has changed its aim … as the martyrs that are falling nowadays on the frontier of Qusayr and its countryside, and in defense of Sayyeda Zainab and its holy shrine, are defending Lebanon and the Arab and Islamic world against the same Zionist plot that targeted Lebanon through its southern frontier,” Raad said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday condemned acts of racism against the country's Arab population after an outcry over an amusement park which segregated Jewish and Arab children.

And he also pledged to bring to justice Israeli extremists behind the wave of so-called "price tag" hate crimes against Palestinians.