Palestinian deputy speaker says shot at by gunmen

Unidentified gunmen shot at the Palestinian parliament's deputy speaker -- an independent supported by Hamas -- while he was driving in the northern West Bank on Thursday, he said.

Hassan Khraisheh told AFP that five rounds hit his car as he was driving just a couple of hundred metres (yards) from his home in the city of Tulkarem.

Khraisheh was not hurt.

The deputy speaker, who has been outspoken in criticism of the Palestinian Authority headed by president Mahmud Abbas, said he was informed an investigation was underway.

Tulkarem is an area under full Palestinian security control in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Palestinian security officials were not immediately available for comment.

Israel jails former Druze MP for Syria visit

Meanwhile, Israel sentenced a former Druze Knesset (parliament) member to 18 months in prison Thursday for travelling to Syria and making contact with a "foreign agent," the Israeli justice ministry said.

Said Naffa travelled in 2007 to Syria, with which Israel is technically still at war, as part of a delegation of 300 Druze religious leaders, the charge sheet said.

A member of parliament at the time, he met a leader of the PFLP-General Command, an offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which "is a terror organisation," according to a ministry statement.

Naffa told AFP the trip was aimed at "reestablishing contacts between members of the Druze community in Israel, Syria and Lebanon." He said he had appealed the verdict to the Supreme Court.

Israel has 130,000 Druze citizens out of a population of around eight million. Unlike other Arab citizens of Israel, they are obliged by law to do three years of military service.

The Druze are native to parts of central Lebanon and southern Syria, and the Israel-occupied Golan Heights.