The war does not give a truce for Christmas in Gaza, which registers one of the deadliest days

Christmas does not stop the war in Gaza; Despite the messages of peace, the deaths and injuries increase every day in the Palestinian Strip, whose population no longer knows where to flee, while the Israeli Army also added casualties in one of the days with the most victims since the war began.

At least 166 Gazans died in the coastal enclave in the last 24 hours and 384 were injured by intense Israeli bombing, bringing the total toll to 20,424 dead and 54,036 injured since the start of the armed conflict, according to the Ministry of Health. of Gaza, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas.

Israel has ordered the evacuation of eight towns in the center of the Strip so that residents can move to the city of Deir al Balah, where five massacres were committed in the last 48 hours.

“There is nowhere to run”

“There is nowhere to go in Gaza,” lament many of those displaced by the Israeli offensive, since not even continuing to flee is safe for those who have been doing so for more than two and a half months of war.

“There is no safe zone in the Gaza Strip,” Sabri Abdelrahim told EFE in the Bureij refugee camp, which Israel ordered more than 150,000 people to leave.

Many do not want to leave, but the bombings make them think about it and finally the majority decide to flee, repeating the images of cars and trucks full of people, others in donkey carts with everything they have left.

Children, the elderly, women, along with mattresses, blankets, kitchen utensils and canned food, while Israeli planes fly over. Among the Israeli ranks, fourteen soldiers died in the last 48 hours, among the deadliest days in their Army since the ground offensive in the enclave began.

In total, 153 Israeli soldiers have died in combat since the start of the ground offensive on October 27, surpassing the 119 who died in the 2006 Lebanon war, according to official Army figures.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lamented: “The war is taking a very high toll on us, but we have no choice but to continue fighting” until the “destruction of Hamas,” because “it is the only way to recover our kidnapped people.” “, although “it will take time” and “it has a very high price.”

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, which triggered the war, left more than 1,200 dead and about 240 kidnapped who were taken to Gaza.

The Israeli Army reported that it attacked more than 200 Hamas “terrorist targets” in the last 24 hours and killed numerous militants in joint operations with Shin Bet, the country's internal intelligence service.

In addition to having detained more than 200 “terrorists”, both from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, in the last week, almost 800 since the start of the war, many of them taken to Israel for interrogation.

Sad Christmas

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called for an end to the “river of blood” and the “immense sacrifices” of the Palestinian people in a message for Christmas, a celebration that takes on special relevance in Bethlehem, where Christian tradition places the birth of Jesus.

“The hardships and heroic resilience of our people in their land are the path to freedom and dignity,” said the president of the Palestinian National Authority, which governs small areas of the occupied West Bank.

Every December 24, Bethlehem celebrates a traditional parade with marching bands, prior to the arrival of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem on foot to officiate a mass in the Church of Saint Catherine, the Catholic basilica of the Nativity.

But this year, Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa – the Vatican's religious envoy to the Holy Land – arrived in a solemn procession, without music or festive events, mourning the high number of Palestinian deaths in the war.

Neither carols, nor pilgrims, nor anything of a typical Christmas in Bethlehem, since the war in Gaza turned this Christmas Eve into a sad day in the place where the birth of Jesus is venerated. “It is a very sad Christmas,” lamented the patriarch.

In front of the Christmas Basilica, in Manger Square, this year Jesus appears among rubble and barbed wire, like the children who die every day in Gaza