Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Istanbul this weekend before traveling on to Israel and Ramallah, a top U.S. official said Wednesday, on what will be Kerry's third trip to the Middle East.

Kerry will meet with top Turkish leaders to discuss the situation in Syria, before heading to Jerusalem and the West Bank on Monday and Tuesday.

The army arrested on March 30 three people for attempting to smuggle cannabis to Israel, announced the Army Command on Wednesday.

It said in a statement: “Two Lebanese citizens and a Jordanian were planning to smuggle 20 kilograms of cannabis from Lebanon to the occupied Palestinian territories.”

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon warned on Wednesday that Israel would respond to any attacks on its territory and not allow its people to come under fire "in any form.”

His warning was issued after militants in Gaza fired a rocket at southern Israel, and as a Syrian mortar shell and small arms fire hit the Israeli-occupied sector of the Golan Heights.

Gaza militants fired a rocket into southern Israel on Tuesday, after the death in custody of a Palestinian who suffered from cancer, Israeli police said.

"There was a rocket that was fired," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse. "It landed in an open area," he said, adding there were no immediate reports of casualties or property damage.

A majority of Palestinians believe the U.S. will fail to revive the Middle East peace process, according to a survey after Barack Obama's visit to the region, seen by Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research's report, conducted March 28-30, surveyed 1,270 people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas blamed the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday for the death of a prisoner suffering from terminal cancer.

"The Palestinian presidency holds the government of Netanyahu responsible for the martyrdom of prisoner Maisara Abu Hamdiyeh today in the prisons of the Israeli occupation," Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said in a statement.

The Golan's native Druze have remained fiercely loyal to Damascus through 46 years of Israeli occupation but as the Syrian civil war draws ever closer, it is dividing the tight-knit community.

With the sound of fighting between Damascus troops and rebels booming from just across the armistice line that separates them from their compatriots, some among the Golan's 20,000 Druze are beginning to question their longstanding devotion to the Syrian regime.

Arab Israelis and Palestinians rallied on Saturday, some clashing with Israeli forces, to commemorate Land Day, marking the 1976 killing of six Arab Israelis protesting plans to confiscate Arab land.

Thousands marched from the center of the northern Israeli town Sakhnin to the central event at the memorial site dedicated to the six, killed by Israeli forces during mass protests against plans to confiscate Arab land in the Galilee region.

Israeli warplanes staged intense mock raids at medium altitude over southern Lebanon on Friday morning, as an AWACS aircraft remarkably overflew the Nabatiyeh and the southern coast areas in the afternoon, state-run National News Agency reported.

In the evening, Israeli warplanes violated the Lebanese airspace at medium altitude over the southern areas of Nabatiyeh, Iqlim al-Tuffah, Khiyam, Marjeyoun and al-Orqoub.

Turkish and Israeli officials will meet on April 12 for breakthrough talks over compensation for a deadly 2010 flotilla raid, for which the Jewish state apologized last week, the Turkish prime minister said Friday.

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc had initially said the negotiations for compensation of the victims' families would start next week, in remarks carried by the private NTV broadcaster.