Israel on Friday charged a Druze resident of the occupied Golan Heights with spying for Syria, the Shin Bet internal security service and police said.

A Shin Bet statement said that Sudki Sleiman Makat from the border village of Majdal Shams was charged with espionage, having contact with a foreign agent and passing information to the enemy in time of war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government must take steps to freeze settlements that are threatening to "kill the very possibility of reaching peace," the U.N.'s Middle East envoy said Thursday.

In his final report to the Security Council as Middle East coordinator, Robert Serry said "I frankly do not know if it is already too late" to revive peace talks aimed at the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Israel's top Arab MP began a four-day walk to Jerusalem on Thursday in a show of support for the impoverished Bedouin community and to put a spotlight on the "human misery" they face.

Ayman Odeh, who was elected in last week's Israeli polls and heads the Arab parliamentary bloc, set off on a 100-kilometer (60-mile) walk from the southern Negev -- where he has long campaigned for the rights of Bedouin Arabs.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began talks Thursday to form a new Israeli government, which will have to mend shattered ties with Washington, while tackling pressing social and security issues.

After a bitterly fought campaign that exposed deep splits within Israeli society and a damaging rift with key ally Washington, Netanyahu knuckled down to the unenviable task of building a coalition likely to be dominated by right-wing and religious parties. 

In a damning report released Thursday, Amnesty International said Palestinian rocket fire during the 2014 summer war in Gaza had killed more civilians inside the Gaza Strip than inside Israel.

Such deadly attacks on civilians were against international law and constituted "a war crime," it said.

The long-running conflict with Israel claimed the lives of more Palestinian civilians in 2014 than any year since 1967, the United Nations said Thursday, in a damning report on the humanitarian situation.

Meanwhile, rights group Amnesty International criticised the "flagrant disregard" by Palestinian armed groups for the lives of Israeli civilians, fingering the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip as a culprit.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Wednesday formally tasked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with forming the next government.

"I have decided to give you the role of putting together the government," he told Netanyahu at a ceremony broadcast live on Israel's main TV and radio stations. 

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Wednesday took Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to task over an attempt to ramp up rightwing votes by playing the anti-Arab race card.

In a statement released shortly before he was to publicly task Netanyahu with forming the next government, Rivlin took aim at remarks in which he tried to galvanize rightwing voters by saying Arab Israelis were "going to the polls in droves."

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has more powers than ever to pursue a diplomatic offensive against Israel that is likely to accelerate with the re-election of his old adversary Benjamin Netanyahu.

Abbas turns 80 on Thursday, with March 26, 1935 widely accepted as the date of his birth, although his entourage seems keen to avoid all mention of his advanced age and has no plans for any celebration.

As tension mounts with Washington, Israel's outgoing government has suspended a controversial plan to build hundreds of new settler homes in annexed east Jerusalem, a news website reported Wednesday.

The plan involves the construction of 1,500 homes in the settlement neighborhood of Har Homa where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a controversial speech on the eve of March 17 elections, pledging to build thousands of new homes if returned to office.