Israel's government is "on a rampage" against human rights, the new head of Human Rights Watch said on Thursday and urged the United States and other allies to do more to hold it accountable for alleged abuses and persuade it to change course.

A planned overhaul of the judiciary by Israel's religious-nationalist government would be "a disaster" for human rights, HRW Executive Director Tirana Hassan told Reuters.

She called on Washington to follow through after it issued a rare reproach over the move.

An Israeli settler group has called on supporters to bring live animals to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound next week and slaughter them for sacrifice on the occasion of Passover.

Confrontations have taken place between Israeli occupation forces and Palestinians as troops made a number of arrests in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem on Monday night, the Middle East Monitor reported.

Confrontations also took place in Jenin, where Israeli forces arrested Palestinians accused of taking part in acts of popular resistance against the occupation forces and illegal Jewish settlers.

The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has censured the forcible removal of Muslim worshipers from the al-Aqsa Mosque compound during the holy month of Ramadan, saying that the move amounts to declaration of a religious war against Palestinians and is an attempt to change the sacred site’s Islamic identity.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement on Monday that 50,000 Palestinian worshipers had performed Tarawih prayers at al-Aqsa Mosque despite restrictions imposed on their entry to the mosque.

Thousands of mourners turned out in the occupied West Bank on Sunday to pay their respects to a Palestinian man who died in an Israeli prison last month, after their body was finally released.

There are an estimated 6000 antiquity sites in the West Bank. “Practically in every village or town there are archeological remains of varying scale from a watering hole to a multilayered mound,” according to Emek Shaveh, an Israeli NGO that works “to defend cultural heritage rights and to protect ancient sites as public assets that belong to members of all communities, faiths and peoples.”

The atmosphere on the roads leading to Al-Aqsa Mosque during the first Friday of Ramadan, one of the holiest days for Muslims, was in stark contrast to previous days.

Israeli forces blocked roads towards the holy site in East Jerusalem, where over 100,000 Muslim worshippers - friends and families - came to pray. 

Drones and helicopters circled in the sky above the Dome of the Rock. 

More than half of Palestinians expect a new intifada to erupt as a result of Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank, a new survey has revealed.

According to a survey carried out by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 61 percent of Palestinians expect a new uprising, while 68 percent support the formation of armed groups, such as the Nablus-based Lions' Den, who do not take orders from the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian prisoners suspended on Wednesday night a hunger strike that was planned to start today after the Israel Prison Services (IPS) conceded to their demands and stopped all punitive and arbitrary measures against them, the official news agency WAFA reported.