Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was to meet with senior judges on Monday in a bid to defuse a crisis that erupted after he assumed sweeping new powers, sparking strikes and deadly protests.

The crisis talks, on the eve of rival rallies which threaten to deepen the country's divisions, come a day after a member of his party was killed in clashes outside its offices in the Nile Delta town of Damanhour.

Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal on Monday told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that his movement backs a Palestinian bid for enhanced United Nations status, a Hamas statement said.

But the statement, backed by a similar one from another member of the Hamas politburo in exile, appeared at odds with sentiments expressed by Hamas members in the Gaza Strip.

The Turkish army insisted Monday that any deployment by NATO of Patriot missiles on the border with Syria would be used for defensive purposes only and not to launch any attack, after Damascus warned that the move would be a "provocation".

"The system is a purely defensive measure, against possible air and missile threats from Syria," the army command said in a statement.

Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stunned observers on Monday by announcing his retirement from politics ahead of snap elections in January,

The decision appeared to end a decades-long career that has seen him serve in top governmental posts and lead the country as prime minister.

Rebel fighters seized control of a key dam on the Euphrates river in northern Syria, limiting the army's overland access to the battleground city of Aleppo to a single route, a monitoring group said on Monday.

"The capture of the Tishrin dam is very important. It means that the army basically has only one road left to Aleppo," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Saudi Arabia on Monday beheaded three men convicted of separate murders across the kingdom, the interior ministry announced.

Mubarak al-Harithi and Obaidallah al-Harithi, whose nationality was not given, were executed in Mecca province for having stabbed and shot dead a victim named as Ayedh al-Harithi, it said in a statement carried by official news agency SPA.

Gunfire from Syria hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights overnight close to an Israeli military vehicle monitoring the ceasefire line but causing no injuries, the military said on Monday.

"There was gunfire near an Israeli military vehicle which was driving along the security fence," a military spokeswoman said, adding the incident had occurred late on Sunday.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev slammed as "unacceptable" the recognition and support by France and other states of the Syrian opposition battling the regime of President Bashar Assad.

In a wide-ranging interview with Agence France-Presse and Le Figaro ahead of a visit to Paris starting Monday, Medvedev also spoke of the EU economic crisis as a "serious threat" and did not rule out returning to the Kremlin in the future.

Israeli and U.S. defense officials have successfully tested the David's Sling missile defense system, completing the first phase of the weapon's development, the defense ministry said on Sunday.

"The Israel Missile Defense Organization and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency completed the first phase of the development of the David's Sling Weapon System, by conducting a successful interception," a statement said.

A Palestinian was wounded in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday after being shot by Israeli security forces, medics said, a day after Hamas deployed police to prevent clashes.

According to the Gaza medical sources, the incident occurred east of Khan Younis.