Bangladesh police have arrested a senior official from the main opposition party and accused him of plotting against the state following his meeting with an Israeli political adviser, an official said Monday.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government is stepping up a crackdown on political opponents in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, which is also reeling from a wave of killings blamed on Islamists.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced Sunday a Tehran anti-Israel cartoon contest themed around the Holocaust, accusing Iran of denying and belittling it as well as "preparing another Holocaust."

The exhibition, totaling 150 entries from 50 countries, with many entries deriding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government's Middle East policies, opened Saturday in Tehran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu poured cold water on Sunday on the Middle East peace initiative advanced by France by questioning its impartiality, a claim swiftly denied by Paris.

Speaking to ministers ahead of the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu relayed remarks he had made to French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who was visiting the region ahead of a May 30 international ministerial meeting.

A top Israeli official on Friday reiterated the country's opposition to a French attempt to resurrect the peace process with the Palestinians, ahead of a visit by France's foreign minister.

Paris will hold an international ministerial meeting on May 30 to try to revive peace talks that have been frozen since a U.S.-brokered initiative collapsed in April 2014.

Venezuela's U.N. ambassador has apologized to Israel's envoy over remarks suggesting that Israel was seeking a "final solution" for the Palestinians, a U.N. spokesman said Thursday.

Ambassador Rafael Ramirez made the remarks during a Security Council informal meeting on Friday on the protection of Palestinians.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories this month in a bid to relaunch the peace process following the worst flare-up of violence in the Gaza Strip for two years, his office said Tuesday.

His visit, from May 21-24, comes as France seeks to engineer a peace deal based on a two-state solution.

Conflicting claims have been made over the nature of the Israeli strike against an alleged weapons convoy to Hizbullah, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Wednesday.

Syrian rebels said that the strike targeted a Hizbullah rockets convoy on the Lebanese-Syrian border on Tuesday.

A Jerusalem court convicted a 14-year-old Palestinian on Tuesday of the attempted murder of two Israelis in a knife attack last October that was one of the most high-profile of a recent wave of violence.

The Jerusalem District Court also found Ahmed Manasra guilty of inflicting severe injury in the attack he carried out at the age of 13 along with a 15-year-old cousin, officials said.

Israeli authorities have refused to renew the travel documents of a leader of a campaign to boycott the Jewish state, officials said Tuesday.

Omar Barghouti is one of the most prominent campaigners in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which campaigns for a global boycott of Israel until, amongst other demands, the country withdraws from all occupied Palestinian territories.

Hamas's leader in Gaza said Friday his Islamist movement did not seek war with Israel but would resist incursions into the Palestinian enclave, following the worst cross-border violence since 2014.

Three days of mortar and tank fire between Israel and Palestinian militants, as well as Israeli air strikes, have raised concerns of a new war in the Hamas-run territory.