In the coming week, Israeli forces press their campaign against Hamas in southern Gaza.

The European Council's last 2023 summit features crucial decisions on Ukraine and Egyptians vote in their presidential elections.

It's December 7, 2003 in time for the world next week. I'm Bob McMahon.

And I'm Carla and Robbins.

Carla, let's begin with Gaza.

As everybody listening surely knows, the temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has ended.

Fighting resumed promptly, Israeli forces

pushed quickly into southern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of civilians had fled to after

the Israeli push into the north. With expanded ground operations and an ongoing Israeli vow to

eradicate Hamas, what do we know about how this will go? What kind of

endgame might come out of this? Well, Israel seems to be sticking to that declared goal of

destroying Hamas. On Tuesday, the army released a photo of 11 top Hamas military leaders in a tunnel

beneath Gaza with circles around five, they say they have killed, and they also claim to have killed

about half of Hamas' battalion commanders. The current drive-in to the South is now intended

to find and kill the most senior players, believed to still be in Gaza, including Yaya Sinwar,

the leader of Hamas and Gaza, and Mohamed Aif, the chief of the Qasan brigades. But even if they do succeed in getting these people, it's not clear that it's going to be enough to break Hamas or even stop a successor group from springing up.

So that may be their endgame, but is that really going to be an end game?

What we do know is that the situation is getting increasingly desperate. Some 80% of the

population has been displaced since the war began. Humanitarian shelters are four times at their

capacity. And UN Secretary General Antonio Goucesteros, I think summed it up pretty well when he said

a very unusual direct appeal to the Security Council, warning that, quote, there is nowhere safe in Gaza and that there's a severe risk of collapse of the entire humanitarian system there.

And he's calling for the establishment of humanitarian ceasefire, but there's no sign that that's in the works, unless maybe the Israelis think there's a chance for another hostage trade.

...