Binyamin Netanyahu has berated President Putin over his stance on Gaza as his government indicated it would continue fighting in the face of international opposition.
Putin was once seen as friendly to the Israeli leader, but Russia supported a vote in the United Nations security council on Friday calling for a ceasefire, which Israel regards as tantamount to surrender. In a 50-minute phone call, Netanyahu told Putin that any country “would have reacted with no less force than Israel is using”. Russia itself has used overwhelming force in recent years in Chechnya, Syria and Ukraine.
“[Netanyahu] expressed his annoyance over anti-Israel stances by Russian representatives at the United Nations and other fora,” a statement following the call said. Netanyahu also criticised the growing ties between Russia and Iran.
The security council resolution was vetoed by the United States but supported by all other member states apart from Britain, which abstained. Netanyahu is heading for a potential clash with the Biden administration over the progress of the war, which the White House is said to want ended by the first week in January.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are under pressure from the White House and other allies to finish off this stage of the war, the ground invasion to quell Hamas as an overground fighting force, as quickly as possible.
The Biden administration is fearful of the political cost of the high civilian death toll, being blamed in part on its decision to continue providing Israel with munitions. The White House used a rare mechanism to approve the sale of a further 14,000 tank shells without Congressional approval at the weekend.
Israeli officials have indicated that this timeline is unrealistic, saying it will take six weeks or more to quell Hamas’s opposition on the ground and even longer to overcome the threat from its extensive tunnel networks. Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, said the war would go on “until its goals are achieved”.
He added: “I take into consideration everything the US asks and says, and take seriously, along with all the cabinet, what America is doing. We will find a way to help the Americans help us.”
The Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi also said the war would continue. “The evaluation that this can’t be measured in weeks is correct, and I’m not sure it can be measured in months,” he told Israel’s Channel 12 television, about the length of the campaign.
The White House has also said that it is “certainly concerned” at reports that Israel had used white phosphorus in a raid on southern Lebanon earlier in the war.
The IDF says its use is within international law, which permits its use for providing smoke cover but not for attacks on civilians. The reports suggested that nine civilians were injured by white phosphorous in early October.
“We’ve seen the reports,” John Kirby, the White House spokesman, said. “[We’re] certainly concerned. We’ll be asking questions to learn a bit more. We provide white phosphorous with the expectation it will be used in keeping with the law of armed conflict.”
Claims of Israel’s use of white phosphorous in Lebanon resurfaced in the Washington Post, which said it had identified American-made shell fragments.
In Khan Yunis, the biggest city in the south of Gaza, residents have described tanks rolling down the main roads, snipers shooting past houses and corpses lying in the open.
“Everywhere it is very dangerous,” said Hussein Hassan, who is sheltering in a camp set up by the United Nations relief and works agency. “There are snipers on the street of the Japanese health clinic and at its front door.
“People were shot in the street today. A young man was shot by a sniper and died right there in the middle of the street. After sunset, no one goes outside. It’s like a ghost town. Even here shrapnel is landing on people’s tents.”
More than 18,200 Gazans have been killed, say Palestinian health officials. The number of dead in the IDF has passed 100. Conditions for the civilian population are deteriorating fast, with many sick from hunger and disease.
The IDF is still battling hold-out Hamas units in northern Gaza but has sent the full 98th airborne division, made up of paratroops, commandos and supporting tank and other armoured units, into Khan Yunis, which has long been a key base for Hamas.
It is also where hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents who followed Israel’s orders to flee the initial advance in the north have ended up. Many have moved again, most to Rafah, the town on the Egyptian border, crowded with up to a million people.
Those left are bystanders in an asymmetric war between a modern armoured force and a subterranean guerrilla army emerging from tunnels in twos and three to take on the tanks with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs. “There are corpses in the streets,” said Khalil Abu Shamala. “The bombing last night was terrifying. It did not stop and it’s still going on.”
The IDF has taken much of the east of the city, reaching the road that bisects it north to south, which has become the front line. It was confident enough in the control it exercises to allow Israel’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, and Ronen Bar, the head of the internal security agency, Shin Bet, to be filmed together. “We are deepening the achievement in the north of the Gaza Strip, in the south and beneath the ground,” Halevi said.
Hanegbi has threatened to take military action inside Lebanon to force Hezbollah away from Israel’s northern border.
