Israeli President Isaac Herzog has been invited to address a joint meeting of Congress as Israel prepares to celebrate the 75th anniversary of its founding, which congressional leaders called a "historic and joyous milestone."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., issued the invitation to Herzog in a joint letter Tuesday. They said the two nations have shared "an unbreakable bond rooted in common security, shared values, and friendship."

Israel on Wednesday detained three alleged members of the Lions' Den militant group in the occupied West Bank, the army said, including the brother of a key Palestinian militant.

The arrest of Muhammad al-Nabulsi and two others in Nablus comes a day after five Palestinians were killed during an Israeli military operation in the city.

The voices of Israel's Palestinian citizens are often drowned out or delegitimized in the country's noisy politics. Yet in the upcoming parliament election, they could hold the key to breaking an entrenched political deadlock.

Israelis vote Tuesday for the fifth time in under four years. The country remains divided over former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fitness to serve while on trial for corruption. Polls show those numbers have barely budged.

A truck slammed into a minibus in Egypt's fertile Nile Delta region early on Tuesday, killing at least 10 people, authorities said. Officials blamed speeding for the crash; local media said women and children were among those killed.

The collision in the province of Dakahlia, around 150 kilometers (93 miles) out of Cairo, on a highway linking Mansoura, a provincial capital, to the beach town of Gamasa on the Mediterranean Sea, also injured at least nine people.

Qatar has been hit by an "unprecedented campaign" of criticism over preparations for the football World Cup, its ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani said Tuesday.

"Since we won the honor of hosting the World Cup, Qatar has been subjected to an unprecedented campaign that no host country has ever faced," the emir said in a speech.

Where to sleep? It's among the biggest questions facing fans traveling to tiny Qatar for the World Cup amid a feverish rush for rooms in Doha. Some will sleep on cruise ships. Others will camp in the desert. Others will fly in from Dubai and elsewhere.

But in the run-up to the world's biggest sporting event in the world's smallest host country, the struggle for housing is hardly limited to tourists. Qatar's real estate frenzy has sent rents skyrocketing and priced long-term residents out of their own homes, leaving many in the lurch.

Six Palestinians were killed and nearly 20 others injured early Tuesday in sweeping raids by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said that Wadih Al Houh, a militant leader of a new coalition of Palestinian fighters dubbed "The Lions' Den", had been among those killed in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday criticized Israel's neutrality in the Ukraine war, saying the decision by Israeli leaders not to support Kyiv had encouraged Russia's military partnership with Iran.

Israel struck the vicinity of the Syrian capital Damascus on Monday, injuring one soldier, the Syrian defense ministry said, days after a similar strike.

"The Israeli enemy carried out airstrikes from the north of the occupied Palestinian territories targeting sites near Damascus," the ministry said in a statement, adding that a soldier was injured during the rare daytime attack.

A week before Israel's fifth general election in less than four years, one question dominates: will the hawkish ex-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu return to power?

Polls show he would likely need heavy backing from the country's rising extreme-right to form a government -- a scenario which, one expert warned, would spell "disaster" for Israel's democracy.