Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc leader Fouad al-Saniora urged the Lebanese people to unite against continuous Israeli violations of Lebanon's sovereignty, which is now being violated by Syria, welcoming the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Lebanon.

“The souls of our citizens are being violated by Israel and today by the Syrian regime,” Saniora told reporters after meeting with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi in Bkirki.

Al-Qaida on Thursday posted an online video of two plane hijackers of the September 11, 2001 suicide attacks, which they said were part of a war to drive U.S. forces out of the Arabian Peninsula.

Salim al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar, two of the 19 extremists who hijacked the four airliners, appeared reading their wills, in a video produced by As-Sahab media arm of al-Qaida and provided by the U.S.-based SITE Monitoring Services.

France joined a chorus of nations urging a peaceful solution to the Iran nuclear crisis Wednesday, as French President Francois Hollande urged Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu to favor diplomacy.

Hollande made the comments in a telephone conversation with Israel's prime minister Wednesday, his office said.

Israel on Wednesday denied any connection to an anti-Islamic film which was reportedly produced by a U.S. national with Israeli nationality, which sparked attacks on the U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya.

"It is nothing to do with us, Israel is not connected in any way to this story," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told Agence France Presse, condemning the amateurish film as "intolerable intolerance."

An Orthodox Israeli rabbi and former cabinet minister on Wednesday condemned as "garbage and slime" a film deemed offensive to Islam that has sparked deadly anti-U.S. protests in Libya and Egypt.

"Although freedom of expression and the right to use satire are sacred democratic principles, these freedoms should not be used as an excuse to publish garbage and slime," Michael Melchior, a long-standing advocate of inter-faith dialogue, wrote in a statement.

Israel's opposition leader on Wednesday accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of "meddling" in the U.S. presidential election and harming Israel's ties with Washington in a dispute over Iran's nuclear program.

The remarks by opposition leader Shaul Mofaz came as Netanyahu and the White House locked horns over how to handle Iran's nuclear program, with Israel threatening unilateral military action against Tehran, despite American objections.

The head of Britain's foreign intelligence agency MI6 has visited Israel to warn Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against military action on Iran, a report said Wednesday.

John Sawers went to Israel around two weeks ago with a message from Prime Minister David Cameron urging Netanyahu to allow more time to find a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear program, the Daily Mail newspaper said.

An Israeli official on Wednesday dismissed charges by Jordan's King Abdullah II that the Jewish state was trying to foil his country's nuclear energy program, calling the accusation "a hollow excuse."

"Every time that we were consulted on this we adopted a positive approach," the official told Agence France Presse, speaking on condition of anonymity.

King Abdullah II on Wednesday accused Israel of disrupting Jordan's nuclear energy plans and warned of sectarian violence spilling across the border from Syria, in a wide-ranging interview with Agence France Presse.

The king, whose country needs atomic energy to meet its energy needs and power water desalination plants, said "strong opposition to Jordan's nuclear energy program is coming from Israel."

Militants from Gaza on Wednesday fired two projectiles into southern Israel that exploded without causing casualties or damage, a military spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

"They hit in open areas in the Eshkol region," she said. It was not immediately known if rockets or mortar rounds had been fired.