Israel snubbed a United Nations Human Rights Council session Monday debating a scathing report detailing likely war crimes committed during last year's Gaza war, with Israel's ambassador slamming the body as "morally flawed."

"I am out here and not in there because the Human Rights Council has abandoned fairness, has become morally flawed and has entirely politicized its concern for universal human rights," Israel's representative to the council Eviatar Manor told reporters outside the council chambers at the U.N. in Geneva.

France wants a new international group made up of the United States, European powers and Arab countries to be set up to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Monday.

"It could be a sort of Quartet-plus," Fabius told reporters, referring to the foursome led by former British prime minister Tony Blair that included the United States, Russia, the European Union.

Israel's defense ministry on Monday warned Syrian rebels that they should keep jihadists at bay and avoid attacking the Druze minority if they wanted to receive humanitarian and medical aid from Tel Aviv.

Israel has a policy of giving medical assistance to wounded Syrians who reach Israeli lines, but tensions have flared recently due to rebel violence against Druze in Syria.

Israel has approved extending a security barrier to part of its eastern border with Jordan in a bid to keep out militants and illegal migrants, the prime minister's office said Monday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the new barrier was a continuation of the one built along the Egyptian border, which "blocked the entry of illegal migrants into Israel and the various terrorist movements."

Cyprus on Monday sentenced to six years in jail a Lebanese man who pleaded guilty to terror charges linked to 8.2 tons of potential bomb-making material found in his home.

Judicial authorities said that Hussein Bassam Abdallah, who also has a Canadian passport, was a member of the military wing of Hizbullah.

A Palestinian woman stabbed a female Israeli soldier in the neck at a checkpoint between Jerusalem and West Bank city Bethlehem on Monday, police said, in the latest such attack in recent days.

The Palestinian had arrived at the checkpoint, which has separate lines for men and women, and "pulled out a knife and stabbed a military policewoman," a police statement said.

A top U.S. official is expected to visit Beirut to discuss with top Lebanese officials the demarcation of the maritime border with Israel, an issue which was thoroughly discussed by Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Speaker Nabih Berri over the weekend.

Amos Hochstein, who serves as the Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs leading the Bureau of Energy Resources (ENR) at the U.S. Department of State, will travel to Beirut this week.

Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan ended a 56-day hunger strike on Sunday after Israel agreed to release him, his lawyer and the Palestinian Prisoners Club announced.

Adnan, 37, has been in prison for a year under administrative detention, which allows imprisonment without charge for renewable periods of six months indefinitely, and his case had been at the heart of concerns in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israel's navy on Monday halted a flotilla seeking to defy its Gaza blockade without the deadly force that marred a similar attempt in 2010 and escorted one vessel to port.

Among the passengers on the commandeered ship were Tunisia's former president Moncef Marzouki and Arab-Israeli lawmaker Basel Ghattas.

A Palestinian prisoner held in an Israeli jail and on hunger strike for 53 days is in a critical condition and could die "at any moment", his lawyer said Saturday.

"Khader Adnan may suddenly die at any moment, doctors have confirmed to me,"  Jawad Boulos, legal counsel for the Ramallah-based Prisoners Club told AFP.