Tel Aviv/Hebron - A violent stand-off between radical Israelis and Palestinians in Hebron elicited a storm of criticism in the Israeli media Wednesday, with most commentators calling for the settlers to be removed from a disputed house in the divided West Bank city.

More than two weeks of heightened tensions in Hebron boiled over Tuesday, when dozens of settlers rioted, throwing stones at Palestinians and at Israeli police and soldiers, spray-painting slogans and damaging graves.

Local Palestinians also hurled stones at the settlers, seriously injuring an Israeli teenager who was hit in the head.

Tel Aviv/Hebron - Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron clashed with Palestinians and Israeli security forces Tuesday, during riots over disputed property, Israeli police have said.

Police said that settlers and Palestinians threw stones at each other, and that two settlers had been arrested.

The dispute centres on an eviction order passed by the Israeli Supreme Court for a building in the city occupied by Jewish settlers since March 2007.

Jerusalem/Ramallah/Gaza City - Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Tuesday welcomed Hillary Clinton's nomination as the next US secretary of state.

Abbas' staunch rival, the radical Islamic Hamas movement ruling Gaza, however, said Clinton would display the same pro-Israeli bias as it charged previous US secretaries of state had in the past.

"We don't count on any foreign policy of the American administration, especially when dealing with the Middle East and the Palestinian cause," Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan said, adding "there is no difference between the successive administrations."

Ramallah - The leading Palestinian news agency Ramattan shut down Monday, charging the West Bank-based administration of President Mahmoud Abbas had been "obstructing" its work.

Ramattan said in a statement that the Ramallah-based Palestinian Interior Ministry had been harassing its staff, preventing them from entering Abbas' presidential headquarters to do their work and that police had arrested several staff members.

Gaza/Tel Aviv - Israeli soldiers clashed with Palestinian militants in the south-eastern Gaza Strip near the border with Israel Friday, killing one and injuring at least two others, witnesses said.

The gunmen clashing with the Israeli soldiers north-east of the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis were members of the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees faction, Palestinian media reports said.

Palestinian militants responded by firing three mortar shells into Israel.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was checking the report.

Vatican City - Diplomatic "contacts" are under way for a possible visit by Pope Benedict XVI to Israel and the Palestinian Territories in 2009, the papal spokesman said Thursday.

Father Federico Lombardi was commenting on a report by an Israeli newspaper that the pontiff was set to visit the Holy Land in May 2009.

Lombardi said no definite date had been set since the Vatican was still "studying" the situation.

Tel Aviv-based daily Haaretz said in its online English version that Benedict had accepted an invitation by Israeli President Shimon Peres.