Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ministerial colleagues on Sunday that he planned to strengthen barriers along his country's border with Jordan, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The English-language daily's website said Netanyahu told ministers from his Likud party that he feared illegal migrants who currently enter Israel from Egypt would head to the less-fortified Jordanian border once the Jewish state completes a fence along its southern border.

Egypt's military ruler decreed on Sunday that multi-phase elections for parliament's consultative upper house, the Shoura, will be held over a shorter period, effectively speeding up steps towards drafting a new constitution.

The elections, which had been due to take place in three phases between January 29 and March 11, will now be done in two steps, wrapping up on February 22, according to the decree by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi quoted by state news agency MENA.

Bahraini police fired tear gas grenades to disperse protesters, killing a Shiite protester in the Sunni-ruled country where tensions have been running high, the opposition said on Sunday.

Meanwhile the newly-appointed police chief said 500 officers would be recruited across the country, including Shiites, to help bolster community relations as the country tries to "learn lessons" from past unrest.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held talks on Sunday with Gaza's Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya and voiced his support for Palestinian reconciliation efforts, media reports said.

Haniya is in Istanbul as part of his first official regional tour since his Islamist movement seized power in the Palestinian enclave in 2007, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Palestinian and Israeli negotiators will meet for the first time in more than a year in Jordan on Tuesday to discuss stalled peace talks, the Jordanian foreign ministry said on Sunday.

"Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh on Tuesday will host a meeting including the Quartet as well as Israeli and Palestinian officials," ministry spokesman Mohammad Kayed said.

An Arab League advisory body called on Sunday for the immediate withdrawal of an observer mission in Syria saying the deadly crackdown on protest continues despite the presence of monitors.

The speaker of the Arab parliament, ِAli Salem al-Diqbassi, urged Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi to "immediately pull out the Arab observers, considering the continued killing of innocent civilians by the Syrian regime."

Leader of a country that regularly suffers deadly attacks, Nouri al-Maliki joked on Sunday that while Iraq needed to unleash the explosive energy of its people, he did not mean "like a car bomb."

Marking the end of an agreement with Washington that allowed U.S. troops to be stationed in the country, Iraq's prime minister said that though the task of rebuilding would be difficult, he believed there was "energy in our people."

Anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr sharply criticized an offshoot of his movement on Sunday, accusing them of killing Iraqi soldiers and policemen and being beholden to neighboring Iran.

It is the first time Sadr, who is himself judged by critics as close to Tehran, has publicly stated that Asaib Ahel al-Haq, or the League of the Righteous, is supported by the Islamic Republic.

Syrian pro-democracy protesters saw the New Year in with demonstrations, activists said, as a child was reportedly shot dead, becoming the first victim in 2012 of the regime's crackdown on dissent.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said security forces shot dead four people in the central flashpoint province of Homs and three in the central province of Hama.

Thousands of Egyptians packed Cairo's Tahrir Square under a blaze of fireworks to ring in the New Year, capping a roller coaster year of political upheaval and deadly clashes but also the first steps towards democratic rule.

"We're here to welcome the New Year together, Christians and Muslims," said one woman holding an Egyptian flag.