Israel has authorized Turkey to send staff and equipment to a new hospital which is under construction in the Gaza Strip following a diplomatic request from Ankara, an Israeli official said on Tuesday.

An Israeli newspaper considered close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the approval was a gesture aimed at thawing relations between the one-time allies which became icy following a 2010 Israeli raid on a ship seeking to break the Jewish state's Gaza blockade, in which nine Turkish activists were killed.

Palestinian electoral officials on Monday began the long-overdue process of updating voter rolls in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in a key step towards eventual elections, officials said.

"The registration of voters is now beginning in the West Bank and Gaza. We hope accomplishing it will be the first step to ending the division," said Central Elections Commission chief Hanna Nasser in announcing the start of the week-long operation at a news conference in Gaza City.

A Palestinian prisoner who last year staged a hunger strike of more than 100 days was freed from an Israeli prison on Thursday and returned to his home in the Gaza Strip.

Akram al-Rikhawi was shown on Palestinian television being welcomed by a large crowd of well-wishers as he crossed into Gaza after close to nine years in jail.

Israeli army gunfire wounded two Palestinian teenagers near northern Gaza's border with the Jewish state on Friday, a medical official said.

"Two Palestinians, aged 16 and 17, were hit in the legs by Israeli army gunfire east of Jabaliya as they approached a security barrier" between Israel and the Gaza Strip, health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told Agence France Presse.

Gaza's Hamas rulers on Wednesday authorized the Palestinian elections commission to begin voter registration as part of efforts to restart reconciliation, an official said.

"We have agreed to start operations in the Gaza Strip and we will begin in Gaza and the West Bank," Central Elections Commission chief Hanna Nasser said, after a meeting with Gaza's Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak pledged solidarity with the Palestinians on his first trip to Gaza on Tuesday, and backed reconciliation efforts between Hamas and Fatah.

Najib, who entered via the Rafah crossing from Egypt along with his Foreign Minister Anifah Aman and other officials, was met by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya.

Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki will make his first visit to Gaza on February 9, officials from the Hamas government told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

"Tunisia President Marzouki will carry out a very important visit to the Gaza Strip on February 9," Hamas official Ghazi Hammad said, without giving details of the president's itinerary, or who would be accompanying him.

Israeli army gunfire killed one Palestinian and wounded another in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, a spokesman for the territory's emergency services said.

The two men, one of them a 20-year-old farmer, were hit by live fire east of Jabaliya and near the Israeli border, Ashraf al-Qudra said.

Advocacy group Amnesty International has called for the release of an Egyptian journalist facing military trial under a controversial law that allows the army to court-martial civilians.

The army arrested Mohamed Sabry, a freelance video journalist and an activist who opposed military trials, in the eastern Sinai peninsula while he was working on a story for the Reuters news agency, Amnesty International said.

A six-year-old boy in Gaza died on Saturday and three others were wounded in an explosion in Khan Yunis, Palestinian medical sources said.

The Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis was not able to state what caused the explosion that resulted in the death of Moussa Kawaree.