As Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas prepares to touch down in Washington for a meeting on Monday with Barack Obama, an extension of peace talks with Israel looks far from certain.

Palestinian and Israeli leaders have been locked in talks U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry fought hard to launch in July after a three-year hiatus, but as negotiations have faltered, Israel has kicked up more obstacles to a peace deal that would end decades of conflict.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said Thursday that the U.S. had yet to present a framework for a Middle East peace deal, as a deadline ending nine months of negotiations loomed.

"Until now, we haven't received the framework agreement we were promised," Abbas said at news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza fired scores of rockets at southern Israel on Wednesday, causing no casualties but prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn of a tough response.

The escalation came just hours after British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived on his first official visit to the region since taking office in 2010.

Britain will stand firm against attempts to delegitimize or boycott Israel, Prime Minister David Cameron told MPs in Jerusalem on Wednesday, shortly before Palestinian militants fired at least 25 rockets at the Jewish state.

Speaking at the outset of a two-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, Cameron gave a 20-minute address to the parliament, pledging "rock solid" support for Israel's security and expressing "deep skepticism" over Iran's nuclear intentions in a speech which checked all the right boxes and won him sustained applause.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday ruled out any deal with the Palestinians unless they recognize Israel as the Jewish state and give up their refugees' right of return.

And he said Israel and the Palestinians were getting further away from reaching a peace deal which would end the decades-long conflict, with U.S.-led peace talks bogged down in a bitter dispute over the question of Israel as a Jewish state.

Iran dismissed as farcical Tuesday Israel's highly publicized display of weapons it said it had seized from a vessel in the Red Sea bound for Gaza from Iran.

The foreign ministry said a news conference given by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday beside the alleged cargo was pure propaganda aimed at torpedoing Iran's growing rapprochement with the West.

The Israeli army was on Sunday unloading a ship which it intercepted in the Red Sea allegedly transporting arms from Iran to Gaza and escorted to the port of Eilat.

An AFP correspondent said dozens of containers from the Panamanian-flagged Klos-C were being unloaded and transferred on trucks to a nearby navy base.

A group of Israeli teenagers have informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu they will refuse to serve in the military because of its role in the occupation of Palestinian land.

"The main reason for our refusal is our opposition to the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the army," 50 youths wrote in a letter to Netanyahu published Saturday by an Israeli pacifist group.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he is opposed to freezing construction in settlements as a means to extend U.S.-sponsored peace talks with Palestinians.

Such a freeze "would serve nothing," Netanyahu told public radio.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday raised the possibility that some Jewish settlements would remain under Palestinian sovereignty if the two sides struck a peace deal.

"It is clear that some of the settlements will not be part of a (peace) deal," Netanyahu, wrapping up a visit to the United States, told Israeli television.