Retired Israeli General Israel Ziv says strains between Netanyahu and Israeli military leaders over the aims of the offensive in Gaza are worse than ever, Al Jazeera reports.

The Israeli military and security echelons, he said, feel they have “exhausted the purpose of the war”, reaching a “tactical peak”.

“We are getting close to finishing the job defined by the government and we’ll reach a point when we’re just fighting guerrilla warfare, and that could take years,” Ziv was quoted as saying by US media.

The divide between Netanyahu and Israel’s military played out yesterday when Israel’s military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Hamas could not be rooted out because it is “an ideology”, undermining Netanyahu’s stated goal of fully defeating it.