Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited his country’s forces in Gaza on Monday as he insisted Israel would go full force with its attack amid international pressure for an end to the fighting.

“With our heroic fighters in Gaza – fighting until victory!” Netanyahu’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, stated Monday. The words accompanied a video that showed Netanyahu walking from a helicopter and then being escorted through scenes of bombed-out buildings with Israeli soldiers flanking him on both sides.

Netanyahu in an address to his political party previously vowed the war would not stop.

“We are expanding the fight in the coming days, and this will be a long battle and it isn’t close to finished,” he said in the address, according to the Associated Press.

He delivered a similar message in a speech in Israel’s parliament, where families of the more than 100 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza held signs calling for Israel to reach a deal to bring them home immediately. “Now! Now!,” they chanted from the gallery, the AP reported.

The United Nations Security Council last week approved a measure meant to step up humanitarian aid to Gaza, where thousands of people have been killed by Israel’s bombardment of the country. Israel’s war is itself a response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that killed 1,200 people and left hundreds more hostages in Gaza.

The text called for the release of hostages, and for “urgent steps” to allow humanitarian access, and adds urgency to “create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

The U.S. abstained from the final vote but did not block the resolution, a sign of how it has been trying to step up pressure on Israel over its handling of the war. The Biden administration’s support for the war has led to divides in the Democratic Party and criticism internationally.

Netanyahu’s trip to Gaza was his second since the war began, according to The New York Times.

Netanyahu says Israel paying ‘heavy price’ for war as deaths mount

Family of Israeli soldier Staff Sgt. Birhanu Kassie mourn over his grave during his funeral at Mt. Herzl military cemetery -

Israel is paying a “heavy price” for its war on Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, as the toll of soldiers killed in fighting with Hamas mounted.

“This is a difficult morning, after a very difficult day of fighting in Gaza,” he said after the army announced that 14 soldiers had been killed in the Palestinian territory since Friday.

The Israeli prime minister vowed to continue the war, which has now claimed the lives of more than 150 Israeli troops, as well as over 20,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

“This war is exacting a high price from us, but we have no choice other than to continue to fight,” Mr Netanyahu said as he opened the cabinet meeting.

“All the government and the people of Israel send our sympathies to the families of the heroes who fell in the war for our home,” he said.

Funerals were held on Sunday for some of the fallen Israeli soldiers.

Fourteen were killed this weekend alone, marking some of the bloodiest days of the conflict for both Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians.

Amid widespread condemnation of the high civilian death toll in Gaza, Israel is coming under increasing pressure from its allies, including the US, to reduce the intensity of its operations in Gaza and move the war into a new phase.

Investigations released by The New York Times and CNN over the weekend found that Israel has been dropping hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs on the densely packed Gaza Strip.

Use of the weapons, which are more than four times the weight of the heaviest bombs dropped by the US-led coalition during the Battle of Mosul against ISIS, are partly to blame for the soaring civilian death toll, experts said.

Referring to a phone call on Saturday with Joe Biden, the US president, Mr Netanyahu said: “I told Biden we will fight until there is total victory, however long it takes. The US understands this.”

The call came as it emerged that Mr Biden reportedly stopped Israel from carrying out a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah in Lebanon just four days after the Oct 7 attacks.

The US persuaded Israel to call off the strike even as its warplanes were in the air on their way to strike Hezbollah targets, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Mr Netanyahu denied the US had intervened to stop its strike, however.

“There have been reports that the US has prevented, and is preventing, us from carrying out operations in the region. This is not true. Israel is a sovereign country,” Mr Netanyahu said on Sunday.

“Our decisions on the war are based on our operational considerations, and not external pressures.”

A high death toll of Israeli soldiers will likely test public support for the war inside Israel, where anger is already mounting again against embattled Mr Netanyahu.

Israel-Gaza war: Netanyahu vows to intensify campaign

Benjamin Netanyahu said the war was "not close to being over"

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will intensify its fight against Hamas in the coming days.

He told members of his party that he had visited Gaza on Monday morning and that Israel's military campaign there was "not close to being over".

His comments come days after the US secretary of state said Israel should lower the intensity of its strikes.

The war began on 7 October after Hamas led a deadly attack on communities inside Israel.

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry said on Monday that some 20,674 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli bombardments since then. It says most of the fatalities have been women and children.

Some 1,200 people, mainly civilians, were killed when Hamas gunmen stormed across the border on 7 October. About 240 people were taken back to Gaza as hostages. Israel says 132 are still being held.

Mr Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas and return the hostages to Israel.

He told a meeting of his Likud party that troops he met on his visit to Gaza had urged Israel to keep fighting "until the end".

"We're not stopping. We're continuing to fight, and we're intensifying the fighting in the coming days. It's going to be a long war that's not close to ending."

Later on Monday, the prime minister was heckled by relatives of hostages demanding the immediate release of their loved ones during an address to parliament.

"We will not be able to release all the abductees without military pressure ... we will not stop fighting," he said, as families chanted "Now! Now!" from the gallery.

Israeli and Arab media say that Egypt has proposed a plan for a ceasefire between the two sides.

According to reports, the plan would see the phased release of all Israeli hostages and an undetermined number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails over the course of a month and a half, ending with a suspension of Israel's offensive.

A previous temporary truce deal negotiated by Qatar saw dozens of hostages released from Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

So far, both Israel and Hamas have resisted growing calls for a ceasefire.

On Sunday the Gazan health ministry said an Israeli air strike killed at least 70 people in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of the strip, with a densely populated residential block destroyed.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said "intense" Israeli air strikes led to the closure of main roads between Maghazi and two other refugee camps, Al-Bureij and Al-Nuseirat, "hindering the work of ambulances and rescue teams".

In a statement to the BBC on Sunday, the Israeli military said it had received "reports of an incident in the Maghazi camp".

"Despite the challenges posed by Hamas terrorists operating within civilian areas in Gaza, the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] is committed to international law including taking feasible steps to minimize harm to civilians," it added.