Iran is "closer than ever" to the ability to build a nuclear bomb, Israel said on Thursday, as a new U.N. report said Tehran has begun installing next-generation equipment at one of its main nuclear plants.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's report said Iran started installing new and advanced centrifuges at Natanz, which would enable it to speed up the enrichment of uranium.

An Israeli court handed a Palestinian hunger striker eight months on Thursday for violating his parole, but though he has already served most of his sentence, his fate still lies with a military court.

At Jerusalem Magistrates Court, Samer Issawi, 33, was convicted of breaching the terms of his early release from jail in October 2011 by taking his car to be fixed at a garage in the West Bank, his lawyer Andre Rosenthal told Agence France Presse.

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Thursday made a fresh call for the European Union to put Hizbullah on its terror blacklist, after Syrian rebels claimed the group had fired across the border at Syrian villages.

Earlier this month, Bulgaria named Hizbullah as responsible for a July bombing in the seaside report of Burgas which killed five Israeli tourists and their local driver, bringing fresh calls for Hizbullah to be added to the EU blacklist.

Hundreds of Palestinian protesters on Thursday confronted Israeli security forces in the West Bank at a demonstration in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Some 2,000 people gathered at the Beitunia military checkpoint on Thursday, hoping to march to a nearby military prison. When the Israeli military prevented them from proceeding, protesters began throwing stones and burning tires, the Associated Press reported.

Israeli guards supposedly keeping a round-the-clock watch on a mystery dual nationality prisoner held in isolation failed to notice his suicide for a full hour, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

Although his cell was fitted with four CCTV cameras, the guards did not see Ben Zygier, identified by media as an Australian-Israeli Mossad agent, remove a sheet from his bed and take it with him into the shower cubicle.

Israel has authorized drilling for oil on the occupied Golan Heights in a move likely to draw international protest, local media reported on Thursday.

Yediot Aharonot daily said that a licence to prospect had been issued to U.S.-Israeli energy company Genie, headed by Effie Eitam, a Golan settler and former hardline rightwing cabinet minister.

Civil Defense Minister Avi Dichter mocked discussions by the European Union on blacklisting Hizbullah, describing them as a “charade.”

Dichter accused the European countries that reject labeling Hizbullah as a terrorist organization as “unrealistic.”

Israeli troops have recently completed subterranean warfare drills to prepare them for a potential clash with Hizbullah in southern Lebanon, The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday.

Reconnaissance soldiers from the Israeli army's engineering corps underwent month-long exercises simulating complex terrain fighting, much of which involved dense forests, it said.

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon raised deep concern on Tuesday over Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli prisons, saying they must be charged and tried or be released.

Ban highlighted the case of Samer Issawi, who has been refusing food since August 1 and is in a "critical health condition."

The Israeli army said Tuesday it has launched an investigation after a soldier allegedly posted a picture on Instagram of a Palestinian child's head in the crosshairs of his sniper rifle.

The picture, which went viral on the Facebook-owned picture-sharing website before it was removed, shows a child sitting with his back to the sniper's telescope, with its crosshairs on the left side of his head.