Israel's attorney general has backed plans to cut funding to a Jewish seminary in an extremist settlement over violence by its students towards Palestinians and Israeli troops, court documents showed.

The decision by Yehuda Weinstein to back education ministry plans to halt the cash flow to the seminary in the hardline Yitzhar settlement was spelled out in a statement to the High Court on Wednesday.

Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird met an Israeli minister in annexed Arab east Jerusalem this week, a spokesman said, breaking a widely observed diplomatic taboo.

Baird met Justice Minister Tzipi Livni at her office in east Jerusalem, Canadian foreign ministry spokesman Rick Roth said, in a move normally avoided by visiting diplomats over concerns it could be seen as legitimizing Israel's annexation of the city's eastern sector.

Human rights violations by medics working for Israel's prison service are endangering the lives of both Israeli and Palestinian inmates, especially hunger strikers, a watchdog said on Thursday.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel strongly urged the transfer of responsibility for prisoners' health from the Israel Prisons Service (IPS) to the health ministry in order to ensure detainees' health was put ahead of "security considerations".

The United States on Thursday shot down speculation Palestinian premier Salam Fayyad is poised to offer his resignation to president Mahmoud Abbas after a dispute between the two.

Rumours the U.S.-educated economist would either resign or be told to step down by Abbas have been rife in recent weeks following the high-profile dispute between the pair over the government's hiring and firing policy.

Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas claimed success on Thursday in their month-long campaign to encourage people accused of collaborating with Israel to turn themselves in.

"The campaign to combat espionage achieved a number of goals, and from this evening the deadline for Israeli collaborators to turn themselves in has ended," said interior ministry spokesman Islam Shahwan.

Israeli troops shot and wounded a physically disabled Palestinian man in an attempt to arrest him in Hebron on Thursday, a prisoners' rights group said.

Motazz Obeidu, 32, was "seriously wounded by Israeli army gunfire during an arrest operation" at dawn in the southern West Bank city, the Ramallah-based Prisoners Club said, adding that Israel was "responsible for his life."

A U.N. humanitarian official said on Wednesday a fresh round of Israeli sanctions on the Gaza Strip was hitting food supplies and would have "serious" effects if continued.

"In response to a deteriorating security situation in and around Gaza... Israel has announced a series of heightened restrictions on the movement of people and goods to and from the Gaza Strip, including closures of the Kerem Shalom crossing," U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator James W Rawley said.

The Israeli army rearrested a Palestinian former prison hunger striker in the West Bank on Wednesday, nearly a year after his release, a Palestinian official said.

Thaer Halahla, 35, who was held without charge by Israel for almost two years until June 2012, was rearrested in Ramallah, an official in the Palestinian Authority's ministry for prisoners' affairs told Agence France Presse.

An Arab Israeli was indicted on Wednesday for contact with an enemy agent after he went to Syria and joined rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad, security officials said.

Hikmat Massarwa, from Taibe village in Galilee, was also charged at Lod District Court with undergoing military training and for travelling overseas illegally, the Shin Bet domestic security agency said.

The United States reacted with concern Wednesday after Iran unveiled a new uranium production facility and two extraction mines, but said it had not been "blindsided" by the news.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hailed the advances on Tuesday and boasted of mastery over "the entire chain of nuclear energy" only days after talks with world powers on its disputed nuclear program ended in deadlock.