Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will seek re-election in the country's upcoming national vote, expected to be held by late October, the 76-year-old leader's Likud party announced Wednesday.

"Prime Minister Netanyahu will run in the next elections and, God Willing, he will win," the party said on Telegram.

Iran attacked U.S. bases in Jordan and Bahrain on Wednesday, the latest salvo in tit-for-tat strikes with the United States after the downing of a U.S. helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz.

The worst bout of fighting between Washington and Tehran since their April 8 ceasefire has cast further doubt on U.S. President Donald Trump's earlier claim that negotiations were in their "final throes" before reaching an enduring settlement to end the Middle East war.

Members of Palestinian factions including Hamas agreed in principle for Gaza's armed groups to hand over parts of their arsenals to a yet-to-be-created, ad hoc Palestinian entity during talks in Cairo, Palestinian sources told AFP on Tuesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said negotiations over a peace deal to end the Middle East war were in their final stages, after Iran and Israel halted attacks that threatened to reignite the months-long conflict.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that a U.S. military helicopter was shot down by Iran and that the United States "must" respond.

The Apache helicopter is the second crewed aircraft that Washington has confirmed was shot down by Iran during the Middle East war, following the loss of an F-15 fighter plane in April.

France Tuesday banned far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country, the French foreign minister said, slamming him for actively promoting the annexation of the West Bank and the "re-colonization" of Gaza.

"Four leaders of settler organizations, and twenty-one violent settlers" were also banned from French territory, Jean-Noel Barrot wrote on X, condemning a "policy that the overwhelming majority of the international community, firmly committed to the two-state solution, cannot accept".

Israel's latest strikes on Lebanon and Iran have made clear that U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who started the war in lockstep, want different things.

Trump had publicly warned Israel not to strike Beirut. When it did, on Sunday, Iran responded by firing ballistic missiles at Israel for the first time since the April ceasefire. Israel then struck Iran, with which Trump has been engaged in weeks of high-stakes negotiations.

For more than two years, hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza and Lebanon have lived in dread of Avichay Adraee's next social media post.

Israel's Arabic-language military spokesman has been the animated face of its campaigns and the main source of warnings ahead of strikes and major offensives. That has made him one of the most recognizable Israelis in the Arab world and a focus of fury as well as some fascination.

The enormous costs of Israel's multi-front war and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's determination to turn his country into a "super-Sparta" of the Middle East are driving up the defense budget and raising fears of cutbacks in education and healthcare.

The total cost of the series of interconnected regional conflicts that began with Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 stood at 405 billion shekels ($138 billion) as of late April, according to the governor of the Bank of Israel, Amir Yaron.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday said Tehran remained at the negotiating table after halting attacks on Israel following the first exchange of fire since the April truce.

"Diplomacy and defense are the two wings of national power; we have neither left the battlefield nor the negotiating table," Pezeshkian said in a post on X, adding that Tehran "will not retreat in the face of any threat".