Palestinian leaders expressed concern that Israel would use the seizure of a ship laden with what officials said were hundreds of tons of weapons from Iran to divert attention from its settlement expansion and accusations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Hezbollah denied any connection to the weapons.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, commenting on U.N. deliberations yesterday over Israel's conduct during last winter's Gaza war, said that Iranian efforts to kill civilians by smuggling massive amounts of weapons to Hezbollah were the real war crime.

"It is a war crime that the U.N. Security Council should have a special meeting over," he said in Tel Aviv. "A major component of this shipment were rockets whose only goal was to hit civilians and kill as many civilians as possible - women, children, old people."

Israel displayed on Wednesday the contents of the ship it seized off Cyprus - crates filled with rockets, missiles, mortars, antitank weapons, and munitions - the largest such haul in the country's history.

Israel's assertion that the weapons came from Iran were bolstered by Iranian markings on the sides of the containers and what it said was a document proving that the ship had set off from an Iranian port. Israel has not publicly shown the document, however, nor offered evidence that the weapons were headed for Lebanon's Hezbollah fighters.

Hezbollah, in a statement faxed yesterday to the Associated Press in Beirut, said it "categorically denies it has any connection with the weapons which the Zionist enemy claims it seized." Lebanese officials did not comment.

Israeli defense officials said the arms cache would have given Hezbollah, which Israel fought in a monthlong war in 2006, enough firepower to sustain a full month of fighting on that war's scale.

But they also said the weapons would not have significantly enhanced Hezbollah rockets' ability to reach deeper into Israel, as the haul consisted of weapons Hezbollah already has.

The defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the military has yet to formally comment on how the arms could benefit extremists.

Iran has never acknowledged giving weapons to Hezbollah. Proof of large-scale Iranian weapons shipments to its proxy forces on Israel's borders could reinforce Israeli demands for tough action against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Israel sees Iran as its biggest threat because of what it believes to be Tehran's ambitions to acquire atomic weapons. Iran says its nuclear program seeks only to generate energy.

State-run Iran TV said the "Israeli propaganda" was aimed at diverting attention from Gaza war-crimes allegations. A Syrian Foreign Ministry official expressed the same view after Israel said the arms were destined for a Syrian port before being handed over to Hezbollah.