Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to reach an agreement over the shape of his new government after resolving an 11th-hour crisis with a key centrist partner, media reports said on Wednesday.

The last-minute deal means Israel's new coalition government is likely to be sworn in just days before a top-level visit by U.S. President Barack Obama.

President Barack Obama Wednesday tapped a new ambassador to Libya, six months after the previous U.S. envoy was killed in a brutal militant attack which shocked America to its core.

The announcement that career diplomat Deborah Jones is set to replace slain ambassador, Chris Stevens, came as the Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan was in Washington for talks with senior officials.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Wednesday that arming Syrian rebels would breach international law, after Western powers dropped growing hints about giving military aid.

Speaking in London after talks with his British counterpart William Hague, Lavrov also reiterated that it was for Syrians to decide the future of President Bashar Assad.

The health of a Palestinian prisoner who has been on hunger strike for months took a turn for the worse on Wednesday, a lawyer for the Ramallah-based Prisoners' Club told Agence France Presse.

Samer Issawi, who has been refusing food since August, is currently being held in Kaplan hospital near Tel Aviv.

Britain's Prince Charles and his wife Camilla on Wednesday visited a camp for Syrian refugees in northern Jordan as part of a trip to the Middle East, an official said.

The royal couple toured the United Nations-run King Abdullah Park refugee camp near the border with Syria that hosts about 1,000 Syrians who have fled the war in their country, said the Jordanian government official.

Anti-regime activists took to the streets of rebel-held Mayadeen in eastern Syria on Wednesday for a third straight day to demand that jihadist al-Nusra Front fighters leave the town, a watchdog said.

"For the third day in a row, protests erupted in Mayadeen calling on the al-Nusra Front to leave the town," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syria's Muslim Brotherhood called on Wednesday for a week of action both in the strife-torn country and elsewhere to mark the two years since the revolt broke out against President Bashar Assad.

"We in the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria declare the week following March 15 a national week of solidarity with the Syrian people and their blessed revolution," the exiled opposition group said.

A legal body representing Islamist President Mohamed Morsi on Wednesday filed an appeal against a court ruling cancelling Egypt's controversial parliamentary polls, judicial sources said.

The Egyptian State Lawsuit Authority (ESLA) filed the suit on behalf of the president and the Supreme Administrative Court will examine the case on Sunday, one source said.

Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday pledged to turn to the ultra-Orthodox parties to form a coalition if the centrist Yesh Atid refused to back down from its "exaggerated demands".

The Israeli leader has been holding intensive coalition talks ahead of a looming March 16 deadline to announce the shape of his new government. If he fails to piece together a working majority of at least 61 MPs, the task will be handed to another party leader.

Tunisia's lawmakers approved on Wednesday a new government formed to pull the country out of a severe crisis, the same day as an impoverished vendor died after setting himself alight in act of desperation.

Premier-designate Ali Larayedh's broadly based coalition of his own Islamist party Ennahda, two secular parties and independents received 139 votes, or 30 more than needed, in a parliamentary session broadcast on television.