Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has denied giving up on the refugees' right of return, saying remarks about not returning to his home town, which is now in Israel, was a "personal position."

"I have never and will never give up the right of return," he told Egypt's al-Hayatt Egyptian satellite channel late on Saturday, according to a transcript released on Sunday.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has distanced himself from remarks made by one of his senior aides, who dubbed Egypt's government a "shocking dictatorship" and said there was no dialogue between the countries.

Barak said the comments, made by Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad, do not reflect Israel's position. Barak also said that Gilad's words came after he spoke at length about the importance of the peace treaty and proper relations between Israel and Egypt.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that Israel is the “primary beneficiary” from the assassination of Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau head Wissam al-Hasan to distract the public opinion to other matters.

“What will Syria benefit from killing him?” Salehi wondered in an interview expected to be published in the Kuwaiti al-Rai newspaper and the Qatari al-Watan newspapers on Saturday.

Israel lodged a complaint with United Nations monitors on Saturday after three Syrian tanks entered the demilitarized Golan Heights zone that separates the two countries, a military spokeswoman said.

"Three Syrian tanks entered the demilitarized zone near the central Golan heights and the Israel Defense Forces filed a violation complaint to the U.N.," a statement said.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak disavowed on Saturday comments by a top aide who said he doubted there would be any dialogue between Israeli leaders and Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

"The comments by (policy department chief) Amos Gilad do not reflect the policy of the defense ministry," Barak said in a statement quoted by public radio.

Speaker Nabih Berri stated that a foreign company had conducted a survey of Lebanon's offshore and land petroleum and gas resources, which revealed that the country enjoys a wealth that exceeded previous estimates, reported As Safir daily on Saturday.

He said that Spectrum and Petroleum Geo-Services company's survey revealed that Lebanon enjoys the greatest oil and gas wealth in the region, surpassing that of Israel.

A top aide to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday he is apprehensive about the Islamic movement that brought Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to power and sees no dialogue forthcoming between Morsi and Israeli leaders.

"If I am apprehensive about anything, it's the Muslim Brotherhood because the Muslim Brotherhood is an ideological movement and they are undergoing a revival," Amos Gilad, the head of the defense ministry policy department said in remarks broadcast by Israeli public radio.

An electoral pact between the parties of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his foreign minister, designed to strengthen them both in January's general election, could have the opposite effect, according to polls published on Friday.

A survey by Smith Research for the Jerusalem Post indicated that if the election were held now, the rightwing alliance of Netanyahu's Likud and Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu parties would win a combined total of 37 seats in the 120-member parliament, compared with 42 at present.

A Palestinian was seriously wounded by cross-border fire from an Israeli tank in the central Gaza Strip on Friday, a spokesman for the Hamas-run health ministry said.

He did not give the man's name or the exact circumstances but said he was 22 years old and close to the border fence with Israel, east of Bureij refugee camp, when he was hit.

Israeli authorities on Thursday handed over to U.N. peacekeepers a Lebanese shepherd who was arrested near the border in southern Lebanon a day earlier.

Ismail Khalil Nabaa was handed over to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon via the Naqoura border crossing, the army said.