AFP - French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday he would press his Syrian counterpart Bashar Al-Assad to use "all the power" of his country to free a French-Israeli soldier held by Gaza militants.

AP - The Palestinian who went on a deadly rampage on a Jerusalem street this week had spent years in a romantic relationship with a Jewish Israeli woman, relatives said, a rarity in a city where such ties between Arabs and Jews are nearly nonexistent.

AP - Israel crossings with the Gaza Strip were closed Friday in retaliation for Palestinian rocket fire that has violated a rocky truce as Gaza's Islamic Hamas rulers responded by suspending talks on freeing a long-held Israeli soldier.

AFP - Hamas said on Friday it had suspended negotiations on the release of a captured Israeli soldier because the Jewish state was not respecting the terms of a truce with the Islamist movement.

Reuters - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Friday sought the demolition of the houses of two Palestinians behind recent deadly attacks against Israelis after the attorney-general said the move was legally viable.

AFP - Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak ordered the army on Friday to prepare to raze the east Jerusalem house of a Palestinian whose rampage in a bulldozer killed three people, the ministry said.

Reuters - Israel responded to Thursday's rocket attack by again closing its border crossing with Gaza on Friday, dampening hopes among Gazans that a ceasefire between Hamas and the Jewish state might ease an Israeli-led blockade.

AFP - Israel received a report from the Lebanese Hezbollah militia that an Israeli airman reported missing in Lebanon since 1986 has been dead for more than 10 years, the Haaretz daily reported on Friday.

AFP - Israel and Syria have agreed to extend indirect talks under Turkish mediation, Ankara's foreign ministry said Thursday.

AP - An Iranian diplomat said Thursday that four Iranians who disappeared in Lebanon in 1982 are alive in Israel and called for their release.

Reuters - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called on Thursday for quickly starting face-to-face negotiations with Syria after a third round of indirect peace talks mediated by Turkey ended with an agreement to meet again.

AFP - Israeli authorities on Thursday were considering demolishing the home of a Palestinian man who went on a bulldozer rampage in Jerusalem and killed three people before he was shot dead.

AP - A 5-month-old baby whose mother threw her out of a car window to save her from a Palestinian attacker has been reunited with her father.

AFP - Iran's embassy in Lebanon said on Thursday that its four nationals, seized in 1982 by a Christian militia in Lebanon, are still alive and being held in Israel.

Reuters - A deadly rampage in a bulldozer by a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem left Israel grappling on Thursday with the dilemma of how to maintain security in the city along with the premise it is undivided.