Netanyahu says Israel "will fight with fingernails" if US halts arms supply

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country is willing to “stand alone” and “fight with our fingernails” in the war on Gaza, Independent reports.

The statement comes as a thinly veiled rebuttal to ally Joe Biden’s warning that the US could stop supplying him with arms.

The US president has urged Netanyahu not to go ahead with a planned ground invasion of Rafah, where over 1.3 million Palestinians have sought refuge from Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The UN and aid charities say such an assault would have dire consequences for the refugees there.

The Israeli government had not responded to reports that Washington was holding back a shipment of bombs until Mr Biden went public on Wednesday saying the measure was a US warning to the Israelis not to "go into Rafah".

Netanyahu responded in a statement on Thursday, saying: “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."

In a separate interview on US television, Netanyahu suggested he maintained good relations with Mr Biden but that Israel “will do what we have to”.

"We often had our agreements but we have had our disagreements. We have been able to overcome them," he said on the Dr Phil Primetime show.

"I hope we can overcome them now, but we will do what we have to do to protect our country.”

Responding to Mr Biden’s decision to withhold the arms shipment, Mr Netanyahu’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir put up a post on X with a heart emoji between the words "Hamas" and "Biden."