A delegation of Roman Catholic bishops from Europe and North America pledged on Thursday to press their governments to act against the "injustice" of Israel's West Bank separation barrier.

During a three-day trip ending on Thursday, the eight prelates visited Christian congregations in the Gaza Strip, Bethlehem, the West Bank town of Beit Jalla and Madaba and Zarqa, in neighboring Jordan.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's latest reconciliation talks with exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal are not the act of a man seeking peace with Israel.

"Abu Mazen (Abbas) gave an embrace to the head of a terror organization who only a month ago stated that Israel should be wiped from the map," a statement from Netanyahu's office quoted him as saying.

A car exploded near the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv on Thursday, injuring several people, in what police said was a crime-related incident and not linked to militant groups.

"A car bomb exploded in Tel Aviv. Apparently it is a criminal incident, a settling of accounts," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.

When Margaux Stelman began modeling a few months ago, she always had her sister Aline in mind.

Aline was an ex-model who died three years ago after a long battle with anorexia, a common affliction of models trying to look thinner and thinner — and girls trying to look like them.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal have agreed to expedite a stalled reconciliation deal between the rival factions, a Hamas official said Thursday.

The decision came at a meeting in Cairo that was the first in almost a year between the West Bank's Fatah leader Abbas and Meshaal, who heads the Hamas movement that rules the Gaza Strip, and was aimed at ending years of bitter and sometimes deadly rivalry.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak met Wednesday for a meeting that underscored a "strong US commitment to Israel's security," the Pentagon said.

U.S. Defense Department spokesman George Little said in a statement that the two men "discussed a range of issues, and expressed their commitment to ensuring continued cooperation on many important regional issues -- particularly Syria, Iran, and Gaza."

Israel has quietly "legalized" an unauthorized settlement outpost in the West Bank, the Peace Now settlement watchdog said on Wednesday, in the sixth such move within a year.

Peace Now's Hagit Ofran said the move to legalize the Nofei Nehemia outpost, south of the Palestinian city of Nablus, was taken "a few days ago" in contravention of Israel's commitments under the Middle East peace roadmap.

Chuck Hagel, the nominee for the next U.S. defense secretary, will seek to rein in Israel over any attempt to carry out a unilateral strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, Israeli observers believe.

Hagel's nomination by U.S. President Barack Obama must still be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, but the prospect of the former senator assuming the top Pentagon post has already stirred concern in Israel.

Two women were found dead in the West Bank Wednesday after their car was swept away in floods brought by a storm that for days has blasted the Middle East with rain, hail and snow.

Snow carpeted Syria's war-torn cities but sparked no let-up in the fighting, instead heaping fresh misery on a civilian population already enduring a chronic shortage of heating fuel and daily power cuts.

Iran's nuclear ambitions and Syria's chemical weapons are the real threats facing the world, not Israeli settlement building, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.

He made his remarks on a visit to the first Israeli university to be established in a settlement in the occupied territories, in sprawling Ariel in the West Bank.