Israeli airstrikes killed 100 people in one of the war’s deadliest nights, Gaza officials say. At a burial that took place in Gaza on Monday, a line of Palestinians touched white shrouds that contained the remains of at least seventy individuals. Israeli bombing that targeted Maghazi, which is in the center of the troubled strip, is what killed these people, according to Palestinian health authorities.

The fighting that has been going on for eleven weeks between Israel and Hamas came after one of the worst nights in the enclave. A father hugged a dead kid, while others were inconsolable with laughter. Someone exclaimed, “The walls and the curtains fell on us,” and he was right. “I reached down to my four-year-old child, but all I found were rocks.”

Some strikes started a few hours before midnight and continued into Monday. According to Palestinian media, Israel increased the amount of air and ground fire in the central region of Gaza.

Ashraf Al-Qidra, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health, stated that a significant number of people being murdered in Maghazi were females and children. Israeli planes and tanks carried out dozens of airstrikes on buildings and roads in the neighboring towns of al-Bureij and al-Nusseirat, according to health officials. These attacks resulted in the deaths of eight additional people.

An Israeli attack on Khan Younis, which is located in southern Gaza, resulted in the deaths of 23 Palestinians, raising the total number of Palestinians who died overnight to more than 100.

Pope Francis stated in his Christmas message on Monday that children who are dying in conflicts, particularly in Gaza, are the “little Jesuses of today” and that Israeli strikes are reaping an “appalling harvest” of innocent people. He also stated that his message was delivered on Christmas. To celebrate Christmas, a portion of Gaza’s very modest Christian population took a break from the ongoing fighting and hardship.

Residents of Bureij have become homeless as a result of their decision to leave their houses, and some of them have taken to social media to appeal for people to provide them with refuge. Sixty people resided in my home and arrived there under the impression that the central Gaza region was secure. At this time, we are looking for a location to relocate to,” said Odeh, who lives in one of the refugee camps.

The Israeli army stated that it was evaluating the report of an event that occurred in Maghazi and that it was dedicated to minimizing the amount of harm that was caused to civilians. The Israeli government asserts that Hamas operates in densely populated regions and uses people as human shields, although Hamas refutes these allegations.

The Palestinian Red Crescent publicized that footage of injured Palestinian citizens being carried to hospitals was shown. According to the report, Israeli jets were involved in hitting essential routes, which made it difficult for ambulances and other emergency vehicles to travel.

In his “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and globe) message that he delivered on Christmas Day, Pope Francis referred to the attack that Hamas terrorists carried out on Israel on October 7 as “abominable” and once more made a plea for the release of over one hundred captives who are now being held in Gaza.

Christian tradition holds that Jesus was born in a stable two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, which is located on the West Bank and occupied by Israel. Church officials decided to suspend celebrations in Bethlehem.

As an alternative to the customary celebrations, Palestinian Christians organized a Christmas vigil in Bethlehem with songs and prayers for peace in Gaza. Candles lit the vigil.

There was no vast tree, often the focal point of Bethlehem’s Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. To show sympathy with the people of Gaza, nativity miniatures were put in churches amidst the ruins and barbed wire after the conflict in Gaza.

CONDITIONS THAT ARE CATASTROPHIC

According to reports, Islamic Jihad and Hamas are holding more than one hundred hostages. This minor terrorist organization is allied with Hamas and is committed to the destruction of Israel. They are among the 240 captives that they grabbed during their rampage across Israeli cities on October 7, during which they massacred 1,200 people.

More than 20,400 individuals have been proven to have been murdered, according to officials in Gaza, where Hamas runs, and many more are feared to be dead under the debris. Since then, Israel has encircled the narrow Gaza Strip and laid most of it to waste. These deaths have been documented.

It is estimated that the majority of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have been forced to flee their homes, and the United Nations has described the situation as being catastrophic.

The combat on the ground has only worsened since the collapse of a week-long truce at the beginning of the month. The conflict has stretched from the north to the whole length of the heavily populated strip and has spread from the north to the south.

The Israeli military said on Monday that two of its troops had passed away the previous day, increasing the total number of soldiers who had been killed since the beginning of combat operations on October 20 to 158.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, had acknowledged the “heavy cost” the day before. Still, he stated that there was “no choice” but to continue the assault deeper into Gaza until Hamas was defeated “totally.”

The United States, Israel’s most trusted friend, has been exerting pressure on Israel to limit the number of civilian casualties and transition its operations to a phase with a decrease in intensity.

Israel’s military chief of staff announced on Saturday that his troops had mainly secured operational control in the northern part of Gaza and that they would push their operations as far as they could in the southern part of the territory.

However, locals claim that the violence has only become more intense in the northern areas.

Even though Washington classified the conversations that took place last week as “very serious,” diplomatic attempts to negotiate a fresh ceasefire to rescue the remaining captives held in Gaza have not resulted in any visible progress. Egypt and Qatar have mediated these efforts.

Israeli officials told Reuters that Netanyahu was scheduled for a legislative discussion on Monday. Then, shortly after that, he was scheduled to call a session of his war cabinet.

According to the organization, Ziad al-Nakhlala’s exiled Islamic Jihad team was present in Cairo on Sunday. Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of Hamas, attended discussions that took place in recent days before his appearance.

The terrorist organizations have stated that they are not prepared to negotiate any release of captives unless Israel ceases its assault in Gaza. On the other hand, the Israelis have stated that they are only willing to discuss a halt to the continuing combat.

On Wednesday, the government of Argentina permitted the peso currency to drop by more than fifty percent, reaching 801 per dollar. This occurred as markets warily welcomed the first details of President Javier Milei’s plans to put Argentina’s struggling economy back on track.

To combat negative net foreign currency reserves, entrenched capital controls, inflation racing towards 200%, and years of economic stagnation, the government of the libertarian president stormed into office with pledges to implement radical economic changes.

The quick devaluation is one of several steps announced late on Tuesday by the new Minister of the Economy, Luis Caputo. These measures include reducing energy subsidies, reducing the size of the government, and stopping public works bids to bring the deficit down to zero.

“The news is positive,” said Bruno Gennari, an analyst in Argentina who works for KNG Securities. “It is a massive fiscal effort, with 3 percentage points of GDP of spending cuts and 2.2% of additional revenues.”

There was a rise of more than two cents for international sovereign dollar bonds, which now trade between 35.7 and 41.25 cents on the dollar. Many of these bonds are at their best level since 2021. Bond prices increased by an average of three percent.

In early trading, Argentine company shares listed in the United States were uneven. The state-owned oil company YPF had a 1.3% increase, while financial companies such as Grupo Supervielle and Grupo Financiero Galicia experienced a 2.7% and 1.7% decline, respectively.

“Non-deliverable” bets that the peso’s value would continue to fall were reflected in the intense movement of foreign exchange futures. The number of one-year forwards reached a high of 1,687.

The analyst, Salvador Vitelli, stated that the depreciation was “a little more than what the market expected. ” It was a significant departure from the withdrawal from convertibility in 2002. Before that time, the peso had been one-to-one with the dollar for a considerable time.

As a result of years of capital restrictions that severely restrict access to official exchange markets, the black market peso, a standard benchmark for the currency’s actual value, saw a decline of almost seven percent, making it equivalent to 1,150 dollars. On Tuesday, the difference between the actual and official rates was 191%; however, it has since shrunk to 44%.

Since 2019, Argentina has been artificially controlling the peso, which has resulted in a significant disparity between the official exchange rate and the black-market rate. The official exchange rate was 366 per dollar before Caputo’s declaration that it would go to 800, with additional plans for a monthly 2% devaluation.

PILL THAT IS DIFFICULT TO SWALLOW

In the past, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had a more negative outlook on the current condition of its $44 billion program with Argentina. However, it expressed its approval of the “bold” adjustments that it believed might assist in stabilizing the economy and fostering growth.

Jimena Blanco, chief analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, said that the government was attempting to prevent a crash landing that would have otherwise been assured.

“He promised a very tough pill to swallow and he’s delivering that pill,” according to her. “The question is how long will popular patience last in terms of waiting for the economic situation to change?”

According to a report published by Barclays, the “governability” of the measures would be the most significant obstacle since they can potentially increase inflation significantly and precipitate a recession.

On Wednesday, the Central Bank of Mexico announced that it would maintain interest rates at 133% and place the peso on a course of creeping peg depreciation of 2% per month.

In addition, Caputo said that the government would reduce its spending by 2.9% of GDP, with approximately one percentage point of this reduction coming from reductions in subsidies for energy and transportation, and he also presented a list of new levies.

The current administration has not left a patient suffering from a toothache. Manuel Adorni, a spokesperson for the president, stated during a news conference on Wednesday that they had discovered a patient who was in critical condition and on the edge of passing away.

“We are going to do everything we can, not only to bring down the fever but to save him from the disease that is killing him.”

Despite the request for a ceasefire from the United Nations General Assembly, the mounting list of soldier deaths, and a spiraling Palestinian death toll in Gaza, Israeli residents stated on Wednesday that the Israeli army should not back off from its continuous operation to smash Hamas.

On Tuesday, Israel’s military saw one of the worst days in the Gaza war, which has been going on for two months. A colonel was among the ten troops who were killed, raising the total number of casualties to 115. This is almost twice as many as the number of soldiers who were killed during the conflict in the coastal enclave nine years ago.

The “indiscriminate” bombardment of Gazan civilians, according to Vice President Joe Biden of the United States, is causing Israel to lose international support. Even though a significant portion of the enclave has been destroyed, the situation is severe, and more than 18,500 Palestinians have been murdered as a result of the Israeli army’s air and ground assault.

However, six Israelis who spoke to Reuters on Wednesday stated that now was not the time to back down, even though the support was shown in Tuesday’s United Nations resolution. Recent polls have shown that most people will continue to support the war despite the mounting expenses.

A political scientist named Tamar Hermann stated that the slaughter of over 1,200 people, the majority of whom were civilians, by Hamas on October 7 rekindled a dread that Israel had previously experienced when Arabs carried out a surprise attack in 1973. This concern was that Israel’s neighbors and adversaries might completely eradicate the Jewish country.

“The sense of the people is that this is a threat to the very existence of Israel,” said Hermann, who works for the Israel Democracy Institute, which is responsible for conducting frequent opinion surveys on the conflict. According to her, people were ready for an increase in the number of deaths among soldiers.

Ben Zion Levinger, a retired Israeli official, made the statement in Jerusalem that Israel’s adversaries would see any lull in the pursuit of Hamas as a show of weakness on their part.

Should we fail to see this conflict through to its conclusion, then tomorrow morning, we will be engaged in fights not just in the north and east but also in the south and maybe even Iran. As a result, we do not have any other options,” said Levinger, a former employee in the information technology field.

Despite the “terrible” cost, the objective of the military operation was to wreck Hamas infrastructure in Gaza, according to Yuli Edelstein, the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, who stated this objective in an interview.

According to Hamas, the soldiers who were killed on Tuesday demonstrated that Israel will never be able to fulfill its military aims. “The longer you stay there, the greater the bill of your deaths and losses will be, and you will emerge from it carrying the tail of disappointment and loss, God willing.”

“COLLATERAL DAMAGE” After a week-long break in hostilities in November, more than three-quarters of Israelis responded in a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute that the offensive should continue without any modifications to lessen the number of Palestinian civilian casualties or the rise in international pressure.

The Israeli media’s coverage of the conflict focuses more on worldwide coverage than it does on the civilian casualties that have occurred in Gaza. According to Hermann, although the opinions of Israelis on Palestinian casualties varied according to their political leanings, some individuals believed that the killings were a reasonable price to pay for the sake of future security.

“There is a sense of first revenge, mainly on the right, and on the left and the center, they see it as, I would say, secondary to the achievements of the war. It is being perceived as collateral damage.”

The results of a survey that Tel Aviv University carried out in late October among 609 respondents revealed that just 10 percent of Israelis believed that the army was employing an excessive amount of weaponry. The margin of error for this survey was 4.2%.

In an interview, Adam Saville, a resident of Jerusalem who works at a not-for-profit academic institution, stated that Israel was doing all in its power to prevent civilian fatalities.

It’s a terrible thing. He expressed his dismay at the high number of civilians who have been killed or injured. “But this is war, and that’s what happens in war.”

“We didn’t start this.”

HOSTAGES
One of the objectives of Israel’s assault is to return more than 115 captives who the terrorists captured and brought to Gaza, in addition to apprehending or killing the Hamas commanders who planned the rampage through Kibbutzim and a party in Israel on October 7.

Two remains were found this week, according to Israel, and the country claims that at least 19 of the other captives have passed away. During the week-long ceasefire that took place in November, around one hundred of the hostages were freed.

Israel is displaying portraits of the captives along with the message “bring them home” on walls and bus stations, as well as projecting these portraits on public buildings around the country.

It has been demonstrated that Israelis are prepared to make sacrifices in the past to rescue hostages or spare the lives of their forces, but the attack that occurred on OctobeOctober 7h was the single most deadly occurrence in Israel’s history of 75 years, has hardened sentiments.

Considering the precarious nature of the situation, it should come as no surprise that Israelis are uncertain about what a solution that would be considered long-term might look like. On the other hand, according to a study conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute, more than forty percent of Israeli residents believe that the nation ought to work for the establishment of a Palestinian state after the conflict.

Almost sixty percent of Israelis, including forty percent of Arab Israelis, identified the destruction of Hamas in any manner possible as the essential aim of the conflict, according to a survey that was conducted by Tel Aviv University in late October among six hundred and ninety-nine respondents, with a margin of error of four and a half percent.

A third of those polled stated that the primary objective was to get the hostages back home.

“Right now, we didn’t achieve either the first or the second,” Hermann commented. “Most people are ready to continue until the point where at least one of the major aims is achieved.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, stated that the Israeli military will continue to battle.

I say this not just in the face of incredible suffering but also in the face of demands from the world community. Over the radio, he assured the forces stationed in Gaza that “nothing will stop us.”