As his troops and tanks close in on Gaza City, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a swift victory over Hamas even as one of his top generals suggested the war could last at least another year.

International concern is rising about the fate of Palestinian civilians already suffering from mass displacement and severe food shortages that the U.N. designates as famine in places.

Some European powers are poised to recognize Palestinian statehood in defiance of Israeli and U.S. arguments that such a move amounts to rewarding Hamas for the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza and across the region.

Netanyahu — whose government denies there’s famine in Gaza — described Gaza City, the enclave’s de facto capital, as Hamas’ “last important stronghold,” whose fall was necessary to defeat the Iran-backed Islamist group and recover the last 48 hostages it holds.

“I’m aware of the price we are paying in the diplomatic and information space,” Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday in broadcast remarks.

With the war’s second anniversary a month away, the chief of Israel Defense Forces operations, Brigadier-General Israel Shomer, said he hoped fighting would be over before yet another year passes.

“It’s very hard to put one’s finger on the point at which you can say, ‘This is the line at which Hamas puts up its hands in surrender.’ Do we feel more than previously that we’re very close to this point? My answer is yes,” Shomer told Army Radio.

But he added: “If we have to, we can also prepare ourselves to deal with this for years hence.”

According to Netanyahu, 100,000 civilians have left Gaza City in recent days, as instructed by the Israeli army. That means as many as 900,000 remain, a potential obstacle should the military operation authorized a month ago escalate into an all-out assault.

Within Gaza City, the number of residents heading south is increasing, despite attempts by Hamas to deter them from heeding evacuation orders, according to people familiar with the situation on the ground.

Hamas backers are flooding social media with calls for people to stay put: portraying conditions in Gaza’s south as worse than their current situation, belittling those who’ve chosen to leave, and offering much lower estimates of the number who’ve fled.

Activists also filmed people burning evacuation leaflets dropped by Israeli planes. Some displaced people reported having been threatened.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Hamas could avert a siege by negotiating an end-of-war deal under which it would disarm, its leaders would go into exile, and all hostages would be handed over.

“We will be more than happy to reach this objective by political means, by diplomatic means,” Sa’ar told reporters.

Hamas, widely considered a terrorist group in the West, so far has offered Israel only a third, time-limited truce under which it would return some hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and increased aid shipments.

Hamas killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped 250 in the Oct. 7, assaults. The ensuing war has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel has lost more than 450 troops in Gaza combat.

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