Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday that Israel was deliberately seeking to stoke unrest in the occupied West Bank but that Palestinians would not be provoked.

"The Israelis want chaos and we know it but we won't let them," Abbas said in comments at his West Bank headquarters, seemingly in response to an Israeli demand on Sunday that he calm a wave of protest in the territory.

Militants of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, vowed Monday to avenge the death of a prisoner they say was tortured in an Israeli jail.

"This horrific crime will not go unpunished and we promise the Zionist occupation that we will respond to this crime," said a statement distributed to crowds at the funeral of Arafat Jaradat, while armed and masked members of the militant group watched from rooftops, Agence France Presse journalists at the scene reported.

Israel and the United States on Monday staged the first test flight of the latest generation of their Arrow missile defense system, the Arrow 3, the defense ministry said.

"This is the first flight test of the Arrow 3 interceptor and was conducted at an Israeli test range over the Mediterranean Sea," it said in a statement.

A Palestinian prisoner who died in an Israeli jail was tortured to death, a Palestinian official charged on Sunday, dismissing Israeli accounts of an apparent heart attack.

Arafat Jaradat's autopsy showed torture resulting from fractures in his body and bruises in his face, while his heart was in good condition, said Issa Qaraqaa, the minister in charge of prisoner affairs, citing a Palestinian doctor who took part in the autopsy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's envoy has made "an unequivocal demand" to the Palestinian Authority to quell a wave of protests in the West Bank, the government said on Sunday.

Netanyahu has also ordered the transfer of January arrears of tax revenues that Israel collects on the behalf of the Palestinians but has been withholding, the government said in a statement.

Some 3,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails were staging a one-day hunger strike Sunday in protest at the death of an inmate, an official said, as security forces clashed with demonstrators in the West Bank.

"About 3,000 prisoners announced that they would refuse meals," Israel Prisons Service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman, told Agence France Presse. "It's just the meals of one day; three meals."

A Palestinian prisoner died in an Israeli jail on Saturday, officials said, as the number of inmates on hunger strike climbed to 11, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Club.

Arafat Jaradat was "arrested a few days ago. He was killed during the investigation," the Palestinian minister in charge of prisoner affairs Issa Qaraqaa told Agence France Presse.

A month after his rightwing Likud-Beitenu alliance narrowly won an election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still striving to build a coalition, as talk emerges about the possibility of going to the polls again.

Although the small, centrist HaTnuah party agreed on Tuesday to come on board, its six parliamentary seats added to Likud-Beitenu's 31 still leave Netanyahu a long way from a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.

The onshore 3-D seismic scan process is expected to remain until September as the British Spectrum Company, which will conduct it, will cover the expenses estimated to reach $25 million, a local newspaper reported on Friday.

As Safir newspaper quoted a ministerial source as saying that the British firm will pay Lebanon a share of the profits achieved by the survey.

A man on trial for allegedly plotting attacks on Israelis in Cyprus described himself Thursday as a loyal Hizbullah member doing its bidding in Europe, but vehemently denied being part of a group preparing an attack.

The trial of Hossam Taleb Yaacoub, a 24-year-old Swedish-Lebanese citizen, is of interest because he was arrested last July, days before a July 18 bus bombing in Bulgaria killed five Israeli tourists and their Bulgarian bus driver. Bulgarian authorities have accused the group of being behind that bombing.