“The war is at its height. We are fighting on all of the fronts. Achieving victory will require time. As the (IDF) chief of staff has said, the war will continue for many more months,” Netanyahu said.

He added a rare threat to attack Iran directly over the near-daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border. “If Hezbollah expands the warfare, it will suffer blows that it has not dreamed of – and so too Iran,” Netanyahu said without elaborating.

Also on Saturday, Netanyahu thanked the Biden administration for its continued backing, including approval for a new emergency weapons sale, the second this month, and prevention of a UN Security Council resolution seeking an immediate ceasefire. Israel argues that ending the war now would mean victory for Hamas, a stance shared by the Biden administration, which at the same time urged Israel to do more to avoid harm to Palestinian civilians.

In new fighting, Israeli warplanes struck the urban refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij in the centre of Gaza on Saturday as ground forces pushed deeper into the southern city of Khan Younis.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said more than 21,600 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s air and ground offensive since the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel. The ministry, which does not distinguish between the deaths of civilians and combatants, said 165 Palestinians were killed over the past 24 hours. It has said about 70 per cent of those killed have been women and children.

The number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza combat rose to 170, after the military announced two more deaths on Saturday.

The war has displaced some 85 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, sending swells of people seeking shelter in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless bombed. Palestinians are left with a sense that nowhere is safe in the tiny enclave.

With Israeli forces expanding their ground offensive this week, tens of thousands more Palestinians streamed into the already crowded city of Rafah at the southernmost end of Gaza.

Thousands of tents and makeshift shacks have been erected on Rafah’s outskirts next to UN warehouses. Displaced people arrived in Rafah on foot or on trucks and carts piled high with mattresses. Those who did not find space in overwhelmed shelters pitched tents on roadsides.

“We don’t have water. We don’t have enough food,” Nour Daher, a displaced woman, said on Saturday from the sprawling tent camp. “The kids wake up in the morning wanting to eat, wanting to drink. It took us one hour to find water for them. We couldn’t bring them flour. Even when we wanted to take them to toilets, it took us one hour to walk.”

In the Nuseirat camp, resident Mustafa Abu Wawee said a strike hit the home of one of his relatives, killing two people.

“The (Israeli) occupation is doing everything to force people to leave,” he said over the phone while helping to search for four people missing under the rubble. “They want to break our spirit and will, but they will fail. We are here to stay.”

More than a week after a UN Security Council resolution called for the unhindered delivery of aid at scale across besieged Gaza, conditions have only worsened, UN agencies warned.

Aid officials said the aid entering Gaza remains woefully inadequate. Distributing goods is hampered by long delays at two border crossings, continuing fighting, Israeli air strikes, repeated cuts in internet and phone services and a breakdown of law and order that makes it difficult to secure aid convoys, they said.

Nearly the entire population is fully dependent on outside humanitarian aid, said Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. A quarter of the population is starving because too few trucks enter with food, medicine, fuel and other supplies – sometimes fewer than 100 trucks a day, according to UN daily reports.

Additional reporting by Associated Press