Former foreign minister Tzipi Livni will be Israel's negotiator in talks with the Palestinians in the emerging coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his bloc said on Tuesday.

Livni, who heads the centrist HaTnuah party, would serve as justice minister and "negotiator with the Palestinians to reach an agreement that would end the conflict," Netanyahu's Likud-Beitenu alliance said in a statement.

An anonymous prisoner who died in an Israeli prison in 2010, identified by the press as Australian-Israeli Mossad agent Ben Zygier, hanged himself in the bathroom of his cell, court documents said Tuesday.

"The deceased was found hanging in the shower of his detention cell, with a sheet around his neck tied to the window of the bathroom," read the protocol, issued after a hearing at Rishon LeTzion Magistrates Court near Tel Aviv.

The mysterious arrest and suicide of an Australian-Israeli with Mossad ties in a top-secret prison cell near Tel Aviv has raised questions about how Israel's shadowy spy outfit chooses its agents.

While some reports suggested the man now identified as Ben Zygier may have been a loose-lipped braggart with psychological problems, a veteran Israeli defense analyst dismissed the claims, saying it would have shown up clearly in the agency's exhaustive vetting procedures.

Barack Obama will become the first serving U.S. president to receive Israel's presidential medal, from his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres on a visit to the Jewish state next month, Peres's office said on Monday.

"President Obama has made a unique and meaningful contribution to strengthening the state of Israel and the security of its people," it said in a statement.

Israeli police raided overnight the east Jerusalem home of a Palestinian prisoner who has been on long-term hunger strike, arresting his brother, family members and a police spokeswoman said on Monday.

The raid took place in Issawiya on the northern outskirts of annexed east Jerusalem at the family home of Samer Issawi, a 33-year-old prisoner being held by Israel who has been refusing food since August.

Jordan's Arab Potash Company (APC), one of the world's largest potash producers, is in talks with an Israeli firm to buy gas to power its plants and reduce production costs, the government said on Monday.

"The APC is in contact with its Israeli counterpart through the American oil and gas firm Noble Energy to examine the possibility of importing gas," the ministry of energy said in a statement.

Suspected Jewish extremists slashed the tires of cars in a northern West Bank village and scrawled Hebrew graffiti on a nearby wall, Palestinians and Israelis said on Monday.

Hafez Abu Obaya, head of the Yasuf council, told Agence France Presse the incident had taken place overnight Sunday, saying: "Settlers wrote 'price tag' on a wall and punctured the tires of three cars nearby."

Following an Israeli newspaper's scoop, the country's prime minister has "frozen" his annual ice cream budget.

Benjamin Netanyahu's office on Sunday said once he was made aware of the state-financed contract issued to purchase ice cream from his favorite Jerusalem parlor he ordered it stopped immediately. Netanyahu called the contract "excessive and unacceptable."

Israel's parliament is to conduct what it called an "intensive" inquiry into the arrest and death of a jailed Australian-Israeli with Mossad links, a parliamentary spokesman said on Sunday.

"The intelligence subcommittee of the (Knesset) foreign affairs and defense committee decided to hold an intensive inquiry into all aspects of the affair of the prisoner found dead in his cell," the committee spokesman Asaf Doron said.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's office is asking the public to choose an official logo for next month's state visit of U.S. President Barack Obama by voting for one of three proposed designs on Facebook.

Participants have until 1400 GMT on Tuesday to choose their favorite design by clicking "like' on Netanyahu's Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/HEBPMO), a statement from the prime minister's office said.