An Israeli court on Monday found two policemen guilty of negligent homicide after they dumped an injured Palestinian prisoner at the side of a West Bank road and left him to die, legal documents showed.

"By setting down the deceased in the condition and under the circumstances which they did, the accused breached their duty of care toward the deceased," Jerusalem magistrate Haim Liran wrote in his ruling, a copy of which was obtained by Agence France Presse.

Dozens of Palestinian olive trees and grape vines were destroyed and anti-Arab graffiti was daubed in groves of the West Bank village of Beit Omar, residents said on Saturday.

The villagers said the attack had taken place on Friday night or early Saturday and blamed it on Jewish settlers of nearby Bat Ayin settlement, which lies north of the town of Hebron.

Three Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are refusing food, despite the signing this week of a deal to end a mass prisoner hunger strike, Israeli and Palestinian officials said on Thursday.

An official from the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, which tracks the well-being of the 4,700 Palestinians in Israeli jails, told Agence France Presse that "prisoners Mahmoud Sarsak, Akram Rikhawi and Mohammed Abdel Aziz are still on hunger strike."

An Israeli tank shell fired into the Gaza Strip on Thursday wounded seven Palestinians, leaving two of them in critical condition, Palestinian medical officials told AFP.

The shell hit near the Karni crossing east of Gaza City, according to the medics.

A new Palestinian government in the West Bank featuring 11 new faces was sworn in on Wednesday at a ceremony in Ramallah, in a move which angered the Hamas government in Gaza.

Ministers, including returning prime minister Salam Fayyad, took the oath of office in the presence of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

A reshuffled Palestinian cabinet in the West Bank with seven new faces is to be sworn in on Wednesday, labour minister Ahmed Majdalani told Agence France Presse.

"The government will be sworn in at (President Mahmoud) Abbas's office at 6:00 pm (15:00 GMT)," he said.

Prominent leftist Palestinian writer Salameh Kaileh, freed recently after being arrested in Syria last month, was tortured during his detention, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

The Britain-based watchdog distributed several photographs showing large bruises and burn marks on Kaileh's arms and legs.

Security agencies succeeded in the past few days in uncovering a terrorist network with local, Arab, and European links, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Tuesday.

It said that the confessions of one of the detainees led to the arrest of Sunni Islamist Shadi al-Mawlawi, a development which sparked armed clashes in the northern city of Tripoli over the weekend.

EU foreign ministers on Monday issued a harsh critique of Israel, saying the gathering pace of settlement-building, settler extremism and ill-treatment of Palestinians threatens a two-state solution.

"The EU expresses deep concern about developments on the ground which threaten to make a two-state solution impossible," the bloc's 27 ministers said in a statement issued during talks in Brussels.

Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike have agreed a deal with Israel to end their fast in exchange for an easing of their conditions, Palestinian and Israeli officials said on Monday.

"All of the factions signed an agreement to end the strike," Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club told Agence France Presse after several hours of negotiations between prison officials and the senior detainees at Ashkelon jail.