President Joe Biden spoke by phone Monday with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, with Biden continuing to push for a humanitarian pause in Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a White House official said.

Biden and Netanyahu discussed “a whole range of issues” related to the conflict, which also included efforts to secure the release of hostages in Gaza and import humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

Biden reiterated the United States’ support for Israel to protect its citizens but also emphasized the need for Israel to work to minimize harm to civilians in Gaza, Kirby said.

He said the two leaders agreed to speak again in the coming days.

The United States has been calling for a temporary cease-fire to allow for humanitarian aid to be brought into Gaza and hostages captured by Hamas to be released. Israel, however, has rebuffed those requests, with Netanyahu saying last week he won’t consider a pause until Hamas releases hostages.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to several Middle East countries over the weekend to build regional support for a pause, but he had limited success.

Kirby said the Biden administration considers itself to be “at the beginning of this conversation” and will continue pushing for a break in the fighting.

“We still believe that these are conversations worth having,” Kirby said. “And we're going to continue to have them with our Israeli counterparts because we still believe in the value of temporary humanitarian pauses, again localized for specific purposes — to get things in and to get people out, including hostages.”

Kirby pushed back on a question from a reporter suggesting the U.S. has not had much “sway” diplomatically in the region. The White House official said talks are having an impact, citing the United States’ successful efforts to get trucks carrying humanitarian aid into Gaza and foreign nationals out of the territory. 

But Kirby acknowledged there’s “not enough” of either happening now.

“It’s still just a trickle,” he said.

Kirby said more Americans were leaving the Gaza Strip on Monday, but he said an exact number would be announced later in the day because the situation was “unfolding as we speak.”

More than 300 Americans have evacuated over the last several days, he said.

Kirby faced questions about whether the Biden administration believes Israel is taking enough precautions to protect civilians in Gaza. 

“We have seen some indications that there are efforts being applied in certain scenarios to try to minimize, but I don't want to overstate that,” Kirby said. “There have obviously been … many, many thousands of innocent people killed, and each one's a tragedy. And we don't want to see any innocent life taken as a result of this war.

“They are up against a wily foe who is hiding behind civilians, huddling beneath their homes, headquartering themselves in hospitals and schools.”

Kirby added: “I think we all need to remember who they’re fighting. They're fighting Hamas. And this is a group that literally paraglided in on the seventh of October and started massacring and slaughtering innocent people while in their homes and at a music festival. That's the brutality that they're up against.”