Visiting German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on Friday reaffirmed his country's friendship for Israel in "challenging times" for the region, as tensions mount over the Syrian conflict.

"I want to underline that in these challenging times Germany stands alongside its Israeli partners," Westerwelle said at the start of talks in Jerusalem with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling his host a "dear friend."

Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni on Friday slammed Russian arms deals with Syria, after US media reported further weapons shipments to the Damascus regime.

Livni's comments also come in the wake of a surprise visit by CIA chief John Brennan to Israel to discuss the situation in Israel's war-torn neighbor.

Israel is warning Syria to stop transferring advanced weapons to Hizbullah and hinted it is considering more air strikes to achieve this, the New York Times reported Thursday.

"Israel is determined to continue to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hizbullah. The transfer of such weapons to the party will destabilize and endanger the entire region," an Israeli official told the paper.

Jerusalem police closed the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound to non-Muslim visitors on Thursday, in what they said was an effort to avoid a repetition of recent Palestinian unrest.

The decision followed disturbances on Wednesday in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem where police used stun grenades, water cannons and mounted officers against Palestinians who hurled rocks during protests marking the anniversary of Israel's foundation in 1948.

Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said on Thursday that the government wants to give retroactive approval to four West Bank settlement outposts it had previously pledged to at least partially demolish.

In a written response to a petition Peace Now submitted to Israel's Supreme Court against the outposts, the state attorney's office said that settlers had now purchased the private Palestinian land on which they built, paving the way for the government to give its blessing.

Militants in the Gaza Strip fired a projectile that hit an open field in southern Israel on Wednesday causing no damage or casualties, police told Agence France Presse.

Spokeswoman Luba Samri said it struck in the Eshkol region. A military spokeswoman could not say whether the projectile was a mortar shell or rocket.

Germany's foreign minister is set to meet Israeli leaders Friday and the Palestinian caretaker premier Saturday during his visit to the Middle East to promote a U.S. initiative to revive peace talks, a spokesman said.

Guido Westerwelle told Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas by phone on Wednesday that Germany "unreservedly supports" the initiative, said the ministry spokesman.

Sixty-five years after their ancestors were driven out during the Nakba, the "catastrophe" that befell Palestinians, Arab Israeli youths are returning to the village of Iqrit in the Upper Galilee.

A small Catholic church is all that remains of the village their families fled in 1948 during the conflict that accompanied Israel's declaration of independence.

Two sets of talks on Wednesday aimed at easing tensions over Iran's nuclear program are not expected to produce any major breakthrough ahead of next month's elections in the Islamic republic.

In Vienna, the U.N. atomic agency, the IAEA, will press Iranian officials to grant access to sites, documents and scientists involved in Tehran's alleged efforts to develop atomic weapons.

A Palestinian man who lived in Canada for the past 26 years has been deported to Lebanon over a 1968 attack on an Israeli airliner, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced Monday.

Issa Mohammed immigrated to Canada using a false alias in 1987, after being convicted by a Greek court of storming a civilian airliner and killing a passenger and later being released from jail in a hostage exchange.