The Middle East peace process lay in tatters Wednesday after Washington admitted defeat in its efforts to secure an Israeli freeze on settlement building, the Palestinians' condition for resuming talks.

Speaking late on Tuesday, U.S. officials admitted top-level efforts to coax Israel into imposing new curbs on West Bank settlement construction had gone nowhere, prompting Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to declare a crisis in peace efforts but backslapping among Israeli hardliners.

Israel carried out two air raids on the Gaza Strip early Wednesday without causing any casualties, Palestinian security officials said.

The attacks came after Palestinian militants fired two projectiles into southern Israel from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

The death toll from northern Israel's massive forest fire rose to 42 on Monday as Haifa's police chief, Ahuva Tomer, died in hospital of her burn injuries, public radio reported.

Tomer, 52, one of Israel's few female police chiefs, died in Rambam hospital in the Mediterranean city of Haifa where she worked, the radio reported, citing medical sources.

Israel's plan to pull its troops out of northern Ghajar, a disputed village on the flashpoint border with Lebanon, is likely to prove more of a headache than a political victory for Beirut, experts say.

"The people of Ghajar do not want to be part of Lebanon," said Timur Goksel, former senior adviser of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), of the village's 2,200 residents -- none of whom is Lebanese.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Moqdad stated that Lebanese-Syrian ties "cannot be normal if the situation in Lebanon is not normal," reported the Kuwaiti al-Rai newspaper on Sunday.

He said: "Syria will not interfere in Lebanon in the interests of any side and the Lebanese officials are responsible for their country."

Iran will never use force against its Muslim neighbors, its foreign minister told a conference on Middle East security on Saturday, after the United States said Arab states were worried by Tehran's suspected attempts to acquire nuclear weapons.

And in a keynote address to the conference, Jordan's King Abdullah II said Israeli-Palestinian peace talks must be rescued from collapse to ensure regional and world stability.

Saudi King Abdullah's second round of back surgery in New York was successful and he will begin rehabilitation, the royal court announced late Friday.

The surgery "was completed successfully and now the king will begin a second phase of physiotherapy," the court said in a statement on the official SPA news agency.

Saudi King Abdullah, 86, is to undergo more surgery on his back in the United States Friday, the royal court said.

"King Abdullah will return for surgery to repair several vertebrae in his spine in a follow-up to his previous treatment.... in accordance with the plan set by his medical team," the court said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

Israeli forces killed several armed Palestinians planning a "terror attack" as they approached the northern border fence of the Gaza Strip, the military said on Thursday.

"IDF (Israel Defense Forces) thwarts terror attack in northern Gaza," a statement from the military said.

Donors and investors have pledged 3.55 billion dollars for the development of resource-rich but neglected east Sudan, officials said on Thursday at the end of a two-day conference in Kuwait City.

"Total pledges made by participants in the east Sudan donors and investors forum came at 3.55 billion dollars," said Mustafa Osman Ismail, an advisor to the Sudanese president and head of the organizing committee.