Some 200 Arabs demonstrated outside a prison in the central Israeli town of Ramle on Monday, demanding the release of hunger-striking Palestinian inmates.

The protesters, from Israel and Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem who included women and children, demanded the prisoners' release from detention without trial, an Agence France Presse journalist at the scene reported.

Israelis and Palestinians rarely demonize each other in their schoolbooks but each side's texts offer children a one-sided view of their conflict, says a joint study released on Monday.

"Dehumanizing and demonizing characterizations of the other are rare in both Israeli and Palestinian books," according to the study funded by the U.S. State Department and carried out by Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. academics.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat praised on Monday Syrian National Coalition chief Moaz al-Khatib's “bold” proposal to hold dialogue with the Syrian regime.

He said in his weekly editorial to the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa website: “He may have an impossible mission on his hands, but no other alternatives to end the Syrian crisis, based on the Geneva agreement, are available.”

Israel will regret its latest "aggression against Syria", Iran's security chief Saeed Jalili told reporters during a visit to Damascus on Monday.

"Just like it regretted all its wars... the Zionist entity will regret its aggression against Syria," Jalili, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said a day after Israel implicitly confirmed it staged an air strike near Damascus last week.

The head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, accused by Israel of receiving arms which transit through Sudan, has met President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum, official media reported.

Bashir discussed "issues of mutual concern" with Ramadan Abdullah Shallah during talks on Sunday at the presidential guest house, the state SUNA news agency said. It gave no further details.

The army said that "overnight 25 Palestinians were arrested all over the West Bank," but did not provide details.

Sources in Hamas said "20 senior Hamas members were arrested in the West Bank, among them three parliament members." It named them as Hatem Kafisha and Mohammad Al-Tal, arrested in Hebron, and Ahmad Atoun, detained in Ramallah.

A U.S.-funded study released Monday said both Israeli and Palestinian schoolbooks largely present one-sided narratives of the conflict between the two peoples and tend to ignore the existence of the other side, but rarely resort to demonization.

The research by Israeli, Palestinian and American researchers, billed as setting a new standard for textbook analysis, tackled a particularly fraught issue — longstanding Israeli claims that the Palestinians teach incitement and hatred of Israel in their schools.

Israel's air strike on Syria last week may have damaged the country's main research center on biological and chemical weapons, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Wednesday's air strike targeted surface-to-air missiles and an adjacent military complex believed to house chemical agents, a U.S. official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Israeli armed forces chief Lieutenant General Benny Gantz on Sunday started a five-day visit to Washington, the army said, with the Syrian conflict and Iran's controversial nuclear program on his agenda.

"During the course of the visit, the chief of the general staff and his (U.S.) counterpart, General (Martin) Dempsey, will conduct a series of work meetings together, as well as meetings with other American officials," the military said.

The Shin Bet domestic spy agency said on Sunday that it had arrested members of a cell belonging to the radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad group who had plotted to kidnap Israelis.

"A bid by Islamic Jihad to kidnap a soldier or an Israeli citizen was foiled by Shin Bet special forces and police," the agency said in a statement.