Israel Hamas war: Israeli defence minister says war will last months as US envoy discusses timetable

An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires a shell from southern Israel towards the Gaza Strip. Photo / AP

Israel’s defence minister has said it will take months to destroy Hamas, predicting a drawn-out war even as his country and its top ally, the United States, face increasing international isolation and alarm over the campaign in Gaza.

Yoav Gallant’s comments came as US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met Israeli leaders to discuss a timetable for winding down the fighting. The Israelis repeated their determination to pursue the military assault until the militant group was crushed in retribution for its October 7 attack on Israel.

The exchange seemed to continue a dynamic in which the two allies have been locked for weeks. The Biden administration has shown unease at Israel’s failure to reduce civilian casualties and its plans for the future of Gaza, but the White House continues to offer wholehearted support for Israel with weapons shipments and diplomatic backing.

Meanwhile, Israel has changed little in what has been one of this century’s most devastating military campaigns, with a mounting death toll.

The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mohammed Shtayyeh, said it was time for the US to deal more firmly with Israel, particularly on Washington’s calls for postwar negotiations for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Now that the United States has talked the talk, we want Washington to walk the walk,” Shtayyeh said in an interview with the Associated Press a day before he and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are to meet Sullivan.

Sullivan was to visit Ramallah for the meeting, where they will discuss efforts to promote stability in the West Bank, according to an unnamed White House official.

A deadly Hamas ambush of Israeli troops in Gaza City this week showed the group’s resilience and called into question whether Israel can defeat it without wiping out the entire territory. The campaign has flattened much of northern Gaza and driven 80 per cent of the territory’s population of 2.3 million from their homes. Displaced people have squeezed into shelters, mainly in the south, in a spiralling humanitarian crisis.

Gallant said Hamas has been building military infrastructure in Gaza for more than a decade “and it is not easy to destroy them. It will require a period of time”.

“It will last more than several months, but we will win, and we will destroy them.”

After talks with Sullivan in Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he told Israel’s “American friends” that the country was “more determined than ever to continue fighting until Hamas is eliminated – until complete victory”.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Sullivan talked to Netanyahu about moving to “lower-intensity operations” some time “in the near future”.

“But I don’t want to put a time stamp on it,” he said.

Earlier this week, US President Joe Biden said Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing”. US officials have been telling Israel for several weeks that the window is closing for concluding the war in Gaza without losing even more international support.

An Israeli soldier celebrates after returning to Israel from Gaza this week. Photo / AP

Arrests in northern Gaza

The Palestinian telecommunications provider Paltel says all communication services across Gaza have been cut off by the fighting, severing the besieged territory from the outside world.

Heavy fighting has raged for days in areas around eastern Gaza City, which were encircled earlier in the war. Tens of thousands of people remain in the north despite repeated evacuation orders, saying they don’t feel safe anywhere in Gaza or fear they may never be allowed to return home if they leave.

The Israeli military released footage yesterday showing its troops leading dozens of men with their hands above their heads out of a damaged building that it said was the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north Gaza town of Beit Lahia. The troops brought out four assault rifles and set them on the street beside several ammunition magazines.

In the video, a commander said militants had fired on troops from the hospital and that troops were evacuating those inside while detaining suspected militants. Earlier in the week, a Gaza Health Ministry official said weapons inside the hospital belonged to its guards. Neither side’s claims could be independently verified.

Israeli troops have held the hospital since Tuesday, according to the Health Ministry and the United Nations. During that time, 70 medical workers and patients have been detained, including the hospital director, they said.

Several thousand displaced people sheltering there were evacuated after the raid and the remaining patients, including 12 children in intensive care, would be taken to Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the Health Ministry said.

Israel says it is rounding up men in northern Gaza as it searches for Hamas fighters. Recent videos have shown dozens of detained men stripped to their underwear, bound and blindfolded. Some freed detainees have said they were beaten and denied food and water.

Palestinians salvage belongings after an Israeli strike on residential buildings in Rafah yesterday. Photo / AP

A heavy civilian toll

Israel’s air and ground assault, launched in response to Hamas’ unprecedented attack into southern Israel on October 7, has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Its latest count did not specify how many were women and children, but they have consistently made up about two-thirds of the dead in previous tallies. Thousands more are missing and feared dead beneath the rubble.

Multiple strikes hit the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah yesterday, residents reported. After an early-morning strike in Rafah, an AP reporter saw 27 bodies brought into a local hospital.

One woman burst into tears after recognising the body of her child.

“They were young people, children, displaced, all sitting at home,” Mervat Ashour said. “There were no resistance fighters, rockets or anything.”

New evacuation orders issued as troops pushed into Khan Younis earlier this month have pushed UN-run shelters to breaking point and forced people to set up tent camps. Heavy rain and cold in recent days have compounded their misery, swamping tents and forcing families to crowd around fires to keep warm.

Israel has sealed off Gaza to all but a trickle of humanitarian aid. UN agencies have struggled to distribute it since the offensive expanded to the south, because of fighting and road closures.

Rising support for Hamas

Israel might have hoped the war and its hardships would turn Palestinians against Hamas, hastening its demise. But a poll conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research found 44 per cent of respondents in the occupied West Bank said they supported Hamas, up from 12 per cent in September. In Gaza, the militants enjoyed 42 per cent support, up from 38 per cent three months ago.

That’s still a minority in both territories. But even many Palestinians who do not share Hamas’ commitment to destroying Israel and oppose its attacks on civilians see it as resisting Israel’s decades-old occupation of lands they want for a future state.

Israelis, meanwhile, remain strongly supportive of the war and see it as necessary to prevent a repeat of the October 7 attack, in which about 1200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and about 240 people were taken hostage. A total of 116 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive, which began on October 27.

About half the hostages, mostly women and children, were freed last month during a weeklong ceasefire in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.