We’ll fight with our fingernails, says Netanyahu after US warning

ISRAELIS will fight with their “fingernails” if necessary, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after Joe Biden threatened to suspend US shipments of offensive weaponry for the Gaza war.

Using a heart emoji, Mr Netanyahu’s populist security minister Itamar Ben Gvir tweeted “Hamas [Loves] Biden”, provoking calls from opposition leaders in Israel for his dismissal to prevent the rift with Washington growing wider still.

But the Israeli government remains insistent that a full-scale offensive is needed on the packed Gazan city of Rafah to root out Hamas fighters, despite increasingly loud warnings from the White House that such a step is a red line given its likely impact on more than one million Palestinians sheltering there.

President Biden openly warned this week that a Rafah invasion would trigger a halt in US supplies to Israel of heavy bombs, which he conceded had been used to kill Palestinians, with much of Gaza reduced to rubble.

Mr Netanyahu retorted in a video statement: “If we must stand alone, we shall stand alone. If we must, we shall fight with our fingernails. But we have much more than our fingernails, and with that strength of spirit, with God’s help, together we shall be victorious.”

The Israeli leader then sought to modify his defiance by expressing confidence that any rift between Israel and its most important ally was temporary, stressing he had known Mr Biden for more than 40 years.

“We often had our agreements, but we’ve had our disagreements. We’ve been able to overcome them,” Mr Netanyahu said on the US talk show Dr Phil Primetime. “I hope we can overcome them now, but we will do what we have to do to protect our country.”

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said there were no plans for the Government to suspend licences of arms exports by UK companies to Israel.

“But we are very concerned that if there is a full military incursion [in Rafah], we will have terrible civilian casualties. We want Israel to have a plan to avoid those casualties,” he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain. “And, as the Foreign Secretary has said, we’ve not seen that plan yet.”