Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian who stabbed a soldier in the West Bank, the military said Saturday, a day after Palestinians carried out several assaults. The weekend assaults were the latest violence in a year of Palestinian attacks that at times have been near-daily occurrences but have recently been on the decline. On Saturday, the military said a Palestinian pulled out a knife during a security check in the West Bank city of Hebron and stabbed a soldier, prompting forces to open fire and kill the attacker. The incident came a day after what Israeli authorities said were several Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians, police and a soldier. In the first Friday attack, a man came out of Jerusalem's walled Old City brandishing a knife in each hand, police said.

Former Israeli President Shimon Peres' condition was showing slight improvements after he suffered a major stroke, with his physicians saying Wednesday that he had regained consciousness and squeezed his doctor's hand, while the nation rallied in prayer and support for the 93-year-old elder statesman and Nobel Peace laureate. Dr. Yitzhak Kreiss, director of the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, said Peres' condition remained serious Wednesday afternoon, 24 hours after the stroke. But he said Peres' neurological signs were improving. He said that Peres, who had been placed in and out of a medically induced coma, was regaining consciousness from time to time and reacting to stimulation. Peres remained on mild sedatives and a respirator, Kreiss said.

This week FIFA's senior representative, Tokyo Sexwale, will throw his hat into the ring as he attempts to resolve disagreements between Israeli and Palestinian football associations. The disputes are over Israeli restrictions placed on the movement of Palestinian players and the participation of at least five Israeli football clubs in Israeli leagues - two issues which Palestinians claim contravene FIFA's own rules. While progress has been achieved on movement for Palestinian players, the issue of settlement teams remains intractable. Their inclusion within Israeli leagues is the manifestation of a political process that seeks to normalise Israel's claim to the Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967. In this context, football has become a tool to legitimise the expanding settlements as an integral part of Israel.