Two local Palestinian employees of the British consulate general in Jerusalem have been charged on suspicion of arms trafficking as part of an investigation into an alleged plot by two Hamas militants to attack the city's most important football ground.

Israel has appealed to the United Nations to send a strong message condemning an upsurge in rockets fired from Gaza, as tensions increase along its border with the Palestinian enclave.

A cable released by WikiLeaks yesterday suggested close cooperation between Israel and forces loyal to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas when militants from the rival Hamas group overran the Gaza Strip three years ago.

The Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, has a long history of using targeted killings to attack the enemies of the Jewish state. For example in the 1970s and 1980s the Mossad tracked down and killed many Palestinian terrorists like Ali Hassan Salamah involved in the planning of attacks like the Munich Olympics massacre and other terror operations. In some cases the Israeli army's elite commando units would do the killing, in others the Mossad would employ car bombs or assassins. In 1998 a botched attempt was made to kill a senior Hamas official in Amman, Jordan, for which Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was forced to apologize to King Hussein.

The family of Gilad Shalit, the soldier seized by Gaza militants in 2006, sharply criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday for not securing his release despite the disclosure that a German mediator had renewed contact with both sides.

Short-range rockets and mortars rained on southern Israel yesterday as militants sought to derail the revived peace process on the second day of talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas claimed responsibility today for a shooting attack yesterday in which two Israelis were wounded in the occupied West Bank.

Hamas last night claimed responsibility for the killing of four Israelis in a West Bank drive-by shooting attack 24 hours before President Barack Obama hosts a dinner summit to start the first direct peace negotiations for 20 months.

Polish authorities extradited a suspected Mossad agent to Germany yesterday, where he faces charges over a passport that was used in the slaying of a Hamas leader in Dubai earlier this year.

Israeli warplanes fired missiles, killing a senior commander of the Hamas military wing and wounding 11 people in five targets hit across Gaza overnight, the group and the military said today.

Israel's three-year blockade of Gaza has thrust its residents into the embrace of the Islamist group Hamas and created a generation of Palestinians hostile to the Jewish state, according to the departing British ambassador.