The Israeli military said Thursday its air force had attacked a Hamas military position in the Gaza Strip overnight from which gunfire had hit homes in southern Israel.

Shots from Gaza had on Wednesday hit a number of houses in Netiv Haasara, just north of the Palestinian enclave, causing damage but no casualties, it said in a statement.

More than 13 million children are being denied an education by Middle East conflicts, the U.N. said Thursday, warning "the hopes of a generation" would be dashed if they cannot return to classrooms.

In a report on the impact of conflict on education in six countries and territories across the region, the United Nation's children fund UNICEF said more than 8,850 schools were no longer usable due to violence.

French judges investigating claims that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was murdered have closed the case without bringing any charges, a prosecutor said Wednesday. 

"At the end of the investigation... it has not been demonstrated that Mr. Yasser Arafat was murdered by polonium-210 poisoning," the three judges ruled, according to a statement from the prosecutor from the court in Nanterre near Paris told AFP. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday he was boosting security in Jerusalem and reviewing rules for when police may open fire after an increase in stone-throwing and firebombings.

Tensions have been rising in recent months, worsening after the July 31 firebombing of a Palestinian home in the West Bank, attributed to Jewish extremists, killed a toddler and fatally wounded his father.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday he believes Middle East peace talks can be relaunched, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was ready to resume direct talks with the Palestinians.

"I believe there is a chance and I think it is imperative we have not lost sight of that issue," Kerry said in an interview with MSNBC.

Israel on Tuesday expressed strong opposition to a draft resolution that would allow the Palestinian flag to be raised at the United Nations ahead of the annual gathering of world leaders later this month.

Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor appealed to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Sam Kutesa, the General Assembly's president, to block the move, which would break with the U.N. practice of flying only the flags of member states.

The Gaza Strip, ravaged by wars and nearly a decade of a grueling Israeli blockade, could become uninhabitable for residents within just five years, the United Nations development agency said Tuesday.

"The social, health and security-related ramifications of the high population density and overcrowding are among the factors that may render Gaza unlivable by 2020," the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) wrote in its annual report.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tuesday he hoped the U.S. Congress would not be swayed by "warmongers' propaganda" over the nuclear deal struck between Tehran and world powers.

"What happens in the U.S. Congress, that's certainly a U.S. issue," he told a news conference in Tunisia.

Clashes erupted during an overnight Israeli raid to arrest an alleged Hamas member at a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, leaving a border policeman and five Palestinians wounded, officials said Tuesday.

The clashes that included gunfire lasted for hours at the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank and were among the most violent to occur there in recent years. 

U.S. President Barack Obama has stressed the importance of better intelligence cooperation between Washington and Tel Aviv to stop Hizbullah from obtaining more missiles with which to target Israel.

“As much intelligence cooperation and sharing as we’re already doing, we need to do better if we want to stop Hizbullah from continuing to get missiles that can be trained on Tel Aviv,” Obama told The Forward, a newspaper published in New York for a Jewish-American audience, in an interview.