Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a surprise deal with the opposition Kadima party on Tuesday, agreeing to form a national unity government and dropping plans for a snap election.

Under terms of the agreement, Shaul Mofaz, who took over leadership of the center-right Kadima party only six weeks ago, would become deputy prime minister as well as a minister without portfolio in the new cabinet, officials said.

International powers are "in a race against time" to prevent all-out civil war in Syria, where the government could use the presence of ceasefire observers to prepare a new assault, U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon warned Monday.

Speaking ahead of a key U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria on Tuesday, Ban again condemned the "brutality" of President Bashar Assad's forces but said attacks by opposition groups have also "escalated."

The United States said Monday Syria's parliamentary election "borders on ludicrous" as the regime of President Bashar Assad continues its violent crackdown on its people.

"It's not really possible to hold credible elections in a climate where basic human rights are being denied to the citizens and the government is continuing to carry out daily assaults ...on its own citizens," State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said.

Bedouin tribesmen in the Sinai peninsula on Monday briefly detained 10 Fijians from the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), which is charged with monitoring peace between Egypt and Israel.

One of the tribesmen told Agence France Presse they had seized the men because they were seeking the release of Bedouin prisoners held by Egypt.

Syria's foreign minister said on Monday that his government was "facilitating" the work of U.N. observers deployed to monitor a ceasefire, which both sides have been accused of violating, state media reported.

"We continue to facilitate the work of the U.N. team," Walid Muallem told chief U.N. observer Major General Robert Mood, according to state news agency SANA.

The uprising against Bashar al-Assad's regime, and the subsequent killings and reprisals, has fractured the village of Azzara along sectarian lines, turning peaceful neighbors into sworn enemies.

Sunni Turkmen living in the hills of Azzara, in central Homs province, and Alawite residents of the village below, had seemingly coexisted since Ottoman times. Today, a wall of fear separates the two sects.

Israel's Supreme Court on Monday ordered two Palestinians to leave their properties in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, ruling that the properties were owned by Jews, their lawyer told Agence France Presse.

Lawyer Mohammed Dahleh said the court had rejected his clients' appeals, and ruled that Ghazi Zalum's house and Ismail Wazwaz's shop had been owned by Jews in the period before the establishment of Israel in 1948, with the properties later falling into Jordan's hands.

China said Monday it hoped parliamentary elections being held in Syria would help promote reform in the conflict-torn country, as the leader of the nation's opposition visited Beijing.

Syria is currently holding its first "multiparty" parliamentary elections in five decades, but the polls have been dismissed as a sham by the main opposition forces, which have refused to participate.

A Syrian daily on Monday hailed the defeat in France's presidential elections of Nicolas Sarkozy, whose foreign minister Alain Juppe had raised the prospect of military intervention to end the crisis.

"The Sarkozy-Juppe duo in the dustbin of history," announced the front page headline of pro-government daily, al-Watan.

Israel's Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by two Palestinian prisoners who have been on hunger strike for 69 days in protest at being held without charge, their lawyer told Agence France Presse.

"The Supreme Court refused both appeals," Jamil Khatib said of the move by Bilal Diab, 27, and Thaer Halahla, 34, who had appealed to Israel's highest court on Thursday to end the administrative detention orders under which they are being held.