We begin this Christmas nights overseas in Gaza with some of the most intense fighting since the start of the war. Israel launched airstrikes on about two hundred targets, in the last twenty-four hours, including a refugee camp. That strike killed more than one hundred civilians. Anger and frustration over hostages held by Hamas is growing. Family members heckled Israeli Prime Minister B.N today during a speech to parliament. The message? Bring their loved ones home. And now, fears the war will escalate beyond Gaza after a suspected Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital of Damascus killed a senior leader of Iran Revolutionary Guard. Iran is vowing revenge. Elsewhere, Pope F used his Christmas message to ask the world to pray for peace as he called for a ceasefire and the release of all hostages.

The Egyptian proposal includes a ceasefire, a phased release of hostages, and the creation of a Palestinian government of experts who would lead the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. But amid reports Hamas has already rejected the deal, Israel airstrikes on Gaza are only intensifying. Christmas was a day of carnage in Gaza. After Israeli military carried out dozens of airstrikes on the Maghazi refugee camp killing at least a hundred Palestinians according to the Hamas-run ministry of health. In what is being described the deadliest attack since the fighting began, on the ground, the grief was unbearable. Israeli military said it was reviewing the incident after announcing seventeen of its soldiers had been killed over the weekend, its worst two-day losses since early November. Prime Minister B.N met with soldiers in Northern Gaza where he told them “We will not stop forget anyone who talks about stopping”. Elsewhere, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, in the shadow of the Church of the Nativity, a soul incubator. Inside, a figure representing baby Jesus as a symbol of Gaza’s vulnerable babies. A grim theme also on display in nearby Manger Square where a stark nativity scene of Christ born amid rubble and barbed wire was set up. This Christmas, the holy city of Bethlehem was in no mood to celebrate. Back in Gaza, the small Christian community, one of the world’s oldest continue to struggle to survive, but danger is everywhere around them.