President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke Wednesday for the first time since August, their offices said. The weekslong silence between the two leaders highlighted their souring relationship as Israel intensified its war in the Gaza Strip despite Biden’s calls for de-escalation.

Details of the call were not immediately available. It came after Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, delayed a trip to Washington where he had been expected to discuss Israel’s potential response to Iran’s missile attack last week. Gallant said Wednesday that he had postponed the trip at the request of Netanyahu, who told him he first wanted to speak with Biden.

Netanyahu and Gallant have been at odds for months over Israel’s strategy in Gaza, and U.S. officials have found the Israeli defense minister to be a key interlocutor as their ties with Netanyahu have become strained.

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Call Comes After Israel Invades Lebanon

Their call comes a little over a week after Israel invaded southern Lebanon and targeted Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militant group based in Lebanon.

Hezbollah militants fought ground battles with Israeli forces Wednesday in southern Lebanon and lobbed more rockets at northern Israeli towns, as the United Nations warned that hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians had fled their homes because of the escalating hostilities. Israel’s emergency services said two people were killed when a Hezbollah strike hit the northern city of Kiryat Shmona.

A quarter of Lebanon’s territory — mostly the southern areas abutting Israel, but also parts of the Hezbollah-dominated Bekaa Valley and along the Syrian border — is now under Israeli military evacuation warnings, according to the U.N. human rights commissioner. The Israeli military repeated its directive to residents of southern Lebanon on Wednesday to move north, saying that its forces were continuing “to attack Hezbollah sites in and near your village, and for your own safety you are prohibited from returning to your homes until further notice.”

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As the fighting continued, Iran’s foreign minister was in Saudi Arabia as part of a diplomatic tour aimed at preventing further military escalation in the region. But a much anticipated meeting Wednesday between Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was postponed amid tensions between the countries’ leaders.

What Else to Know:

— Stabbing attack: Six people were injured, two of them critically, in a stabbing attack in central Israel on Wednesday, according to Israeli medics. Israeli police called it an act of terrorism, a term used almost exclusively to refer to attacks by Palestinian militants. No Palestinian group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

— Speaking up for UNRWA: Two days after Israel’s parliament advanced legislation that would in effect ban the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that such a move “would be a catastrophe” for the more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza and damage prospects for long-term peace.

— Rocket attack: A barrage of about 90 rockets was fired from Lebanon at Israel late Wednesday afternoon, the Israeli military said. Some of the rockets were intercepted, the military added, but a house in Safed, in northern Israel, sustained a direct hit. Israeli police said no casualties had been reported. The attack came as Israel announced that it had carried out airstrikes on more than 1,400 targets in Lebanon since the start of its ground invasion last week.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Aryn Baker, Ben Hubbard and Aaron Boxerman/Arash Khamooshi
c. 2024 The New York Times Company