Good evening I'm on the Navas and I'm Jeff Bennett on the news hour tonight.

Fierce fighting continues in southern Gaza's largest city as hospital conditions

become increasingly dire for the civilians caught in the crossfire.

Congress struggles to reach an agreement to fund Israel, Ukraine, and the southern border

before lawmakers head home for the holidays.

And Judy Woodruff explores how the COVID pandemic

has made it harder for Americans to separate politics from public health.

It's going to be much tougher now to convince Americans to take vaccines because of the

damage done from this predatory anti-vaccine campaign. Welcome to the news hour. Israel intensified its military operations in Gaza's

second largest city today forcing tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee

and making it more difficult to deliver aid.

The United Nations says nearly 1.9 million people are over 80% of Gaza's population have been displaced by the war many several

times over.

They're now crowded into small areas in south and central Gaza, with the humanitarian situation worsening by the day.

Southern Gaza is now the center of the war, and once again civilians bear the brunt, caught between Hamas hiding among them and Israel's

bombardment.

In Khan Yunus overnight, Amal Meghi and her two children were jolted awake by an Israeli

airstrike. Sifting through the wreckage, she says their were jolted awake by an Israeli air strike.

Sifting through the wreckage, she says they're lucky to be alive.

We were peacefully sleeping, not bothering anyone, asleep,

and I have young children, minding our own business.

All of a sudden the bombardment hit us.

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