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.

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".

The Iranian military's joint command said Monday it was halting its offensive operations, after Israel and Iran exchanged fire in their first attacks since the U.S. struck a ceasefire with Tehran two months ago.

Iran had delivered a "painful response" to Israel and "accordingly, the cessation of armed forces operations is hereby announced", the Khatam al-Anbiya command said in a statement carried by state television.

Local media in Iran said Monday that a "hostile drone" was shot down over the capital Tehran during the new round of fighting with Israel.

"A hostile drone belonging to the American-Zionist enemy was targeted and destroyed by air defenses in the skies over Tehran," the Mehr news agency reported, without elaborating.

The Israeli military said Monday it had struck and dismantled Iranian defense systems deployed across several areas in the country.

"Recently, defense systems were deployed in numerous areas across Iran as part of the regime's efforts to restore its detection and defense capabilities, which were degraded during Operation Roaring Lion," the military said.