U.S. President Joe Biden said on Saturday that he was talking to the Israelis, when asked whether he his encouraging them to delay an invasion of Gaza.

"I'm talking to the Israelis," Biden told reporters. 

The Israeli military has relentlessly attacked Gaza in retaliation for the devastating Oct. 7 Hamas rampage in southern Israel. Even after Israel told Palestinians to evacuate the north of Gaza and flee south, strikes extended across the territory, heightening fears among the territory’s 2.3 million people that nowhere was safe.

Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with airstrikes Thursday, including in the south where Palestinians were told to take refuge, as the Israeli defense minister ordered ground troops to prepare to see Gaza "from the inside," though he didn’t indicate when the ground assault would begin.

In a fiery speech to Israeli infantry soldiers on the Gaza border, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant urged the forces to "get organized, be ready" to move in. Israel has massed tens of thousands of troops along the border.

"Whoever sees Gaza from afar now, will see it from the inside," he said. "It might take a week, a month, two months until we destroy them," he added, referring to Hamas.