Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to keep up the fight against Hamas militants.
He visited Israeli troops in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday morning and then went on to tell lawmakers from his Likud party that the war was far from over.
The leader dismissed what he cast as media speculation his government might call a halt to the fighting and he argued that Israel would not succeed in freeing its remaining hostages without applying military pressure.
"We are not stopping. The war will continue until the end, until we finish it, no less," he said.
The visit came just hours after one of the besieged enclave's deadliest nights in the 11-week-old battle between Israel and Hamas.
Dozens were killed in an Israeli air strike that hit central Gaza’s al-Maghazi refugee camp on Sunday, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry.
One man, Ibrahim Youssef, said his wife and four children including a 4-month-old baby, were trapped under the rubble of the house where they were staying in Maghazi.
"What did they do wrong?" he asked, "were there resistance fighters here?"
The strikes that began hours before midnight persisted into Monday. Palestinian media said Israel had stepped up its air and ground shelling in central Gaza.
Health ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qidra said many of those killed at Maghazi were women and children. Eight others were killed as Israeli planes and tanks struck houses and roads in nearby al-Bureij and al-Nusseirat, health officials said.
Medics said an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza killed 23, bringing total Palestinian fatalities overnight to more than 100.
Pope Francis said in a Christmas message that children dying in wars, including in Gaza, are the "little Jesuses of today" and that Israeli strikes were reaping an "appalling harvest" of innocent civilians.
The Israeli army said it was reviewing the report of a Maghazi incident and was committed to minimising harm to civilians. Israel says Hamas operates in densely populated areas and uses civilians as human shields, which Hamas denies.
