Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned the fight against Hamas will be long and is about to intensify.
Despite growing international calls for a ceasefire amid horrendous Palestinian civilian casualties, Mr Netanyahu said he had visited Gaza on Christmas Day and Israel’s military campaign was “not close to being over”.
The underfire PM has vowed to destroy Hamas and return the remaining hostages to Israel.
And Mr Netanyahu told his Likud party that troops he met on his visit to Gaza had urged Israel to keep fighting “until the end”.
He said: “We’re not stopping. We’re continuing to fight and we’re intensifying the fighting in the coming days.
“It’s going to be a long war that’s not close to ending.”
But later, the PM was heckled by relatives of hostages demanding their immediate release during an address to parliament.
As families chanted “Now! Now!” from the gallery he said: “We will not be able to release all the abductees without military pressure. We will not stop fighting.”
Israeli and Arab media claim that Egypt has proposed a plan for a new ceasefire between the two sides.
It would see the phased release of all Israeli hostages and an undetermined number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails over a month and a half, ending with a suspension of Israel’s offensive.
A previous temporary truce deal negotiated by Qatar saw dozens of hostages released from Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
So far, both Israel and Hamas have resisted growing calls for a ceasefire. And on Christmas Eve, the Gazan health ministry said an Israeli air strike killed more than 100 people in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of the strip, with a densely populated residential block destroyed.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said “intense” Israeli air strikes also led to the closure of main roads “hindering the work of ambulances and rescue teams”.
Gemma Connell of the UN humanitarian agency Ocha said she had seen”absolute carnage” at the Al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza on Christmas Day following the latest blasts.
Many severely injured people could not be treated because the hospital was “absolutely overloaded”, she said.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says 20,674 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombardments.
Around 1,200 Israeli citizens, mainly civilians, were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists on October 7.
