Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the military would have to retain open-ended security control over the Gaza Strip long after the war against Hamas ends.

The remarks came as Israel’s military said its troops had entered Gaza’s second-largest city in its its pursuit to wipe out the territory’s Hamas rulers.

The war has already killed more than 15,000 Palestinians and displaced over three-quarters of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, who are running out of safe places to go.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll in the territory since October 7 has surpassed 15,890, with more than 41,000 wounded.

The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths, but said 70% of the dead were women and children.

Israel says it targets Hamas operatives and blames civilian casualties on the militants, accusing them of operating in residential neighbourhoods.

The United States, Qatar and Egypt, which mediated an earlier ceasefire, say they are working on a longer truce.

Hamas said talks on releasing more of the scores of hostages seized by militants on October 7 must be tied to a permanent ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Israel has intensified its bombardment of Gaza’s second largest city, Khan Younis, with dozens of injured people rushed to hospital as a new phase of the war continues.

Under US pressure to prevent further mass casualties, Israel said it is being more precise as it widens its offensive into southern Gaza after obliterating much of the north.

At the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, ambulances brought dozens of injured people in throughout the night. At one point, a car pulled up and man emerged carrying a young boy in a bloody shirt whose hand had been blown off.

Satellite photos taken on Sunday showed tanks and troops massing outside Khan Younis, the latest target of the offensive, which was home to more than 400,000 people before the war.

Israel has ordered people out of nearly two dozen areas instead of the entire region, as it did in the north.

But with most of Gaza’s population already packed into the south, cramming UN shelters and family homes, there are few places left to go. Israel has barred people who fled the north earlier in the war from returning.

Palestinians say that as Israel continues to strike across the besieged territory, there are no areas where they feel safe, and many fear that if they leave their homes they will never be allowed to return.

Israel has said it must dismantle Hamas’ extensive military infrastructure and remove it from power in order to prevent a repeat of the October 7 attack that ignited the war.

The surprise assault through the border fence saw Hamas and other Palestinian militants kill about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capture some 240 men, women and children.

The Israeli military has said it makes every effort to spare civilians and accuses Hamas of using them as human shields as it fights in dense residential areas, where it has a labyrinth of tunnels, bunkers, rocket launchers and sniper nests.

But the militant group is deeply rooted in Palestinian society, and its determination to end decades of open-ended Israeli military rule is shared by most Palestinians, even those opposed to its ideology and its attacks on Israeli civilians.

That will complicate any effort to eliminate Hamas without causing massive casualties and displacement.

Even after weeks of unrelenting bombardment, Hamas’ leaders in Gaza were able to conduct complex ceasefire negotiations and orchestrate the release of more than 100 Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners last week. Palestinian militants have also kept up their rocket fire into Israel, both before and after the truce.

The fighting has brought unprecedented death and destruction to the coastal strip.

The health ministry in Gaza said the death toll in the territory since October 7 has surpassed 15,890 people – 70% of them women and children – with more than 42,000 wounded. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. It says hundreds have been killed or injured since the ceasefire’s end, and many still are trapped under rubble.

An Israeli army official provided a similar figure for the death toll in Gaza on Monday, after weeks in which Israeli officials had cast doubt on the ministry’s count.

The official said at least 15,000 people have been killed, including 5,000 militants, without saying how the military arrived at its figures. The military says 84 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza offensive.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday that it was too soon to pass judgment on Israeli operations, but that it was unusual for a modern military to identify precise areas of expected ground manoeuvres and ask people to move out, as Israel has done in Khan Younis.

“These are the kinds of steps that we have asked them to undertake.” he said. “These are the conversations we’re having day in, day out.”

The US has pledged unwavering support to Israel since the October 7 attack, including rushing weapons and other aid to the country.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said a deal to establish full diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates proves his country does not need to retreat from occupied land sought by the Palestinians to achieve peace and normalisation with Arab states.

The two countries announced on Thursday they were establishing full diplomatic relations in a US-brokered deal that required Israel to halt its contentious plan to annex occupied West Bank land sought by the Palestinians.

Mr Netanyahu has insisted the annexation plans are only on “temporary hold” at the request of the US.

The UAE, like most of the Arab world, long rejected official diplomatic ties with Israel, saying recognition should only come in return for concessions in peace talks.

Its accord with Israel breaks that long-held tenet and could usher in agreements with other Arab states, undermining a consensus that was a rare source of leverage for the Palestinians.

“According to the Palestinians and to many others in the world who agreed with them, peace can’t be reached without conceding to the Palestinians’ demands, including uprooting settlements, dividing Jerusalem and withdrawal to 1967 lines,” Mr Netanyahu said in a video statement.

“No more. This concept of ‘peace through withdrawal and weakness’ has passed from the world.”

The Palestinians want the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip for their hoped-for state and peacemaking with them since the 1990s has been based on withdrawal from those lands to make way for a Palestinian homeland.

Israel captured the territories in the 1967 Six-Day War, although it withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005.

But what has been a wall of Arab support for the Palestinians and their demands has begun to crack in recent years, in large part because of the shared enmity of Israel and other Arab states towards Iran and Iranian proxies in the region.

The Palestinians bristled at Mr Netanyahu’s remarks.

“Peace should be established on the basis of the Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital,” Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abba, said.

“This is the Arab and international consensus, and anything else has no value.”

Mr Netanyahu also reiterated his interpretation of the UAE deal – that annexation is only being suspended and is still on the table, so long as it was done in coordination with Washington.

UAE officials have indicated the deal means annexation has been shelved entirely.

After President Donald Trump released his Middle East plan earlier this year, which was favourable to Israel, Mr Netanyahu said he would forge ahead with annexing parts of the West Bank.

He backed away from moving forwards with annexation last month in the face of fierce international opposition and misgivings by White House officials.

But Mr Netanyahu, who has seen his popularity plummet over his handling of the coronavirus crisis, has faced searing criticism from settler leaders and their representatives in Parliament over the annexation backtrack and he has tried to reassure them that he remains committed to the move.

President Donald Trump will visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, the White House said on Monday amid controversy in Israel over reported comments by a U.S. diplomat that the wall was in the occupied West Bank.

Trump will say a prayer at the Western Wall, national security adviser H.R. McMaster said, as well as pay a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, considered by Christians to be the site of Jesus’ tomb.

The wall, representing the remains of the Jewish Second Temple, sits on territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and has been a flashpoint of violence in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Israel will be the second stop on Trump’s first foreign trip, following Saudi Arabia. The Republican president will meet with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

The announcement of Trump’s visit to the Jewish holy site came amid the controversy in Israel over a report that a U.S. diplomat preparing Trump’s visit referred to the Western Wall as being part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israel’s Channel 2 reported that during a planning meeting between U.S. and Israeli officials, the Israelis were told that Trump’s visit to the wall was private, Israel did not have jurisdiction in the area and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not welcome to accompany Trump there.

Israel considers all of Jerusalem as its indivisible capital, a claim that is not recognized internationally.

An official in Netanyahu’s office said on Monday that Israel has contacted Washington about the matter.

Asked about the matter, a White House official told Reuters on Tuesday: “These comments were not authorized by the White House. They do not reflect the U.S. position and certainly not the president’s position.”

McMaster sidestepped questions on Tuesday about whether the Trump administration considers the Western Wall part of Israel.

Wildfires tore across central and northern Israel on Thursday, forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee the city of Haifa, as leaders blamed arsonists for some of the blazes and branded them terrorists.

Television pictures showed a wall of flames raging through central neighbourhoods of Israel’s third largest city. Firefighters dowsed a petrol station with water as the blaze edged closer.

The fires have been burning in multiple locations for the past three days but intensified on Thursday, fuelled by unseasonably dry weather and strong easterly winds.

“Every fire that was caused by arson, or incitement to arson, is terrorism by all accounts. And we will treat it as such,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters gathered in Haifa. “Whoever tries to burn parts of Israel will be punished for it severely.”

Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan referred to “arson terrorism” and said there had been a small number of arrests, providing no other details.

On social media, some Arabs and Palestinians celebrated the fires and the hashtag #Israelisburning was trending on Twitter.

“It’s likely that where it was arson, it goes in the direction of nationalistic,” Police Chief Roni Alsheich told reporters, without going into further detail.

With fires burning in the forests west of Jerusalem, around Haifa, on central and northern hilltops and in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the government sought assistance from neighbouring countries to tackle the conflagration.

Greece, Cyprus, Croatia, Turkey and Russia offered help, with several aircraft already joining efforts to quell the blaze, dropping fire-retardant material to try to douse the heaviest fires and stem their spread.

Netanyahu said he had asked for a “Super Tanker” fire fighting aircraft to be sent from the United States.

The Palestinian Authority had offered assistance as well, he said.

A thick haze of smoke hung over Haifa, which rises up from the Mediterranean Sea overlooking a large port. Schools and universities were evacuated, and two nearby prisons transferred inmates to other jails, a prisons service spokesman said. Patients were moved out of a geriatric hospital.

WORRYING FORECAST

A lack of rain combined with very dry air and strong easterly winds have spread the fires this week across the centre and north of the country, as well as parts of the West Bank. Hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed but no deaths or serious injuries have been reported.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, the leader of the Jewish Home party which supports settlements in the West Bank where Palestinians seek statehood, said on Twitter that arsonists were disloyal to Israel, hinting that those who set the fires could not be Jewish.

“Only those to whom the country does not belong are capable of burning it,” he said in a tweet in Hebrew.

Haifa’s mayor said he feared for the city and called on residents with water sprinklers to turn them on to help keep the flames at bay. Those leaving their homes were urged to go to sports stadiums and other safer locations.

Highway 443, which links Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as it cuts through a southern flank of the West Bank, was temporarily closed to morning rush-hour traffic as flames reached the city of Modi’in, about half way between the two conurbations.

Local weather forecasters have said the tinder-dry conditions – it has not rained in parts of Israel for months – and strong winds are set to continue for several days and they see little prospect of normal seasonal precipitation arriving.

“Meteorology is not responsible but it is conducive to the spread of these fires,” said Noah Wolfson, the chief executive of weather forecasting company Meteo-Tech. “The atmosphere will remain very dry, at least until Monday or Tuesday.”

Politics and religion combined on Sunday to halt much of Israel’s train service at the start of its working week.

Bowing to demands by ultra-Orthodox partners in the governing coalition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered rail maintenance suspended on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath – when work is ritually forbidden – and found himself widely blamed for a transportation snarl-up a day later.

With a section of track north of Tel Aviv dismantled for repairs just before the sabbath began on Friday evening, the national railway stopped most services on Sunday so the work could be completed.

That left thousands of commuters, including soldiers heading back to base after weekend leave, scrambling for seats on replacement buses and Netanyahu laying the blame on his transport minister, a rival in his right-wing Likud party. Road traffic was heavier than usual.

It was all, Israeli media commentators said, avoidable and the product of petty politics.

“The Haredim (ultra-Orthodox), as far as Netanyahu is concerned, come before everything else,” columnist Ben Caspit wrote in the Maariv newspaper, referring to a desire to keep intact a coalition alliance with religious parties.

Netanyahu’s coalition, which includes 13 legislators from two ultra-Orthodox parties, controls 66 of parliament’s 120 seats.

For decades, a delicate balance between modern-day life and religious observance has been maintained by a status quo between Israel’s secular majority and a Jewish Orthodox minority.

Under that arrangement there is largely no bus or train service in Jewish cities and villages on Saturdays, but maintenance work has been routinely allowed.

In recent weeks, however, ultra-Orthodox political leaders have faced criticism on Twitter and in religious newspapers over the issue of railway repairs on the Sabbath as pressure mounted on them to challenge the government.

Transport Minister Yisrael Katz had insisted the work continue, but Netanyahu stepped in a week ago to limit its scope and then halt it completely on Saturday.

“Had Netanyahu only put his foot down and pounded on the desk (ultra-Orthodox politicians) would have capitulated … Things are good for them,” popular Israeli commentator Nahum Barnea wrote in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

A statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office accused Katz, who has been locked in a power struggle with Netanyahu, of having initiated the crisis with the religious community “in order to damage (Netanyahu’s) public image”.

Katz has made no public comment. Taking his usual seat next to Netanyahu at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, he was stone-faced as the prime minister admonished him in front of cameras.

“Ministers are appointed to resolve crises, not create them,” Netanyahu said.