Israel's war on Gaza, now well into its fourth month, has taken a toll on its own economy with many industries pausing business even as a few continue to get new investments. Since October, Israel's government has subsidised the salaries of reportedly 360,000 mobilised reservists deployed to Gaza – many of whom are high-tech industry workers in finance, artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals and agriculture. In November, the Bank of Israel put the war's "gross effects" on Israel at 198 billion shekels ( 53bn) and pared back its estimates for economic growth to 2 percent per year for 2023 and 2024, down from 2.3 percent and 2.8 percent. In December, Israel's Finance Ministry said that the war will likely cost Israel approximately 13.8bn this year if its high-intensity phase concludes during the first quarter of 2024. In the midst of that, experts are watching to see how business is doing on the ground.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has blamed Israel for a strike in Syria that killed four senior members of the group. "The Revolutionary Guards' Syria intel chief, his deputy and two other Guards members were martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel," Iran's Mehr news agency announced, citing an unnamed source. Nour News, another Iranian news agency that allegedly has close ties to the country's intelligence networks, identified Gen. Sadegh Omidzadeh, intelligence deputy of the IRGC's Quds Force in Syria, and his deputy among the dead. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that another Iranian and a Syrian -- unidentified at this time -- also died in the strike. The strike destroyed a building in the western Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh that the IRGC officials had allegedly used as a base of operations.

JERUSALEM – Beginning Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists used remote controlled drones to disarm tanks and knock out surveillance cameras during its surprise attack on Israel, through to last week, when a Hezbollah drone from Lebanon landed directly in an army base in northern Israel, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly becoming part of the weapons arsenal used by Iranian-backed non-state players in their war against the Jewish state. While Israel has in place what it calls "an aerial defense array" – used multiple times over the past three months to thwart "hostile aircraft" from Gaza and Lebanon – as UAVs become easier to obtain, manufacture, enhance and weaponize, Israel, as well as other countries around the world, are racing to contend with an ever more lethal form of combat that is already outpacing existing military defense systems. "The Israeli – and the U.S. – militaries have been using drones for a long time, especially in counterterrorism, for intelligence gathering or for precision strikes in order to distinguish between civilians and fighters," Dr. Liran Antebi, program director of advanced technologies and national security at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told Fox News Digital. Xtend's Griffon Counter UAVs, with speeds of up to 93.1 miles per hour, and AI technology are being used by the IDF to identify and kill rogue drones. "However, what was once the silver bullet used by democracies in counterterrorism and to act in more ethical ways, is now in the hands of terrorists or non-democratic states and is being used in the opposite way," she said.

A senior Hezbollah commander said the terrorist organization does not want an expanded war with Israel Tuesday, the same day that it launched a drone attack against an Israeli army base. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed group, claimed the Tuesday attack was in retribution for an Israeli strike that killed Wissam al-Tawil, who commanded Hezbollah's Radwan forces. Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem released a televised speech stating that his group does not seek an all-out war with Israel, "but if Israel expands it, the response is inevitable to the maximum extent required to deter Israel." President Biden's administration has sought to prevent Israel's war against Hamas from boiling over into a regional conflict. Nevertheless, Iran's proxy terrorist groups have carried out more than 100 attacks on U.S. and Israeli targets since October.

Israeli forces killed at least five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank's Tulkarem on Sunday morning, taking the toll in Israeli raids, including drone strikes, in the occupied territories to seven in the last 24 hours. Two of the victims were killed in drone strikes while several others were injured in an ongoing large-scale military offensive in Tulkarem, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported quoting the local media and medical sources. At least two Palestinians were killed on Saturday in two separate incidents in the occupied West Bank. Israel's army confirmed its forces used aircraft to target Palestinians in the town, saying it struck and killed fighters who had launched explosives at them from the Nur Shams camp. Following the air raid, Israeli forces prevented ambulances from reaching the camp and arrested one paramedic, Wafa reported.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. joins'Fox News Sunday' to discuss a new survey that revealed 74% of Americans are concerned about a war between the U.S. and China. This is a rush transcript of'Fox News Sunday' on December 3, 2023. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. A special hour on the state of defense, a report card on America's military readiness to meet the challenges of an increasingly dangerous world. Israel's war with Hamas, the latest conflict to ignite instability, turbo- charging attacks on our forces in the region from Iranian proxies. We'll get reaction from National Security Council Communications Coordinator John Kirby about the restart of the war and the headwinds the Biden White House faces from Democrats over conditioning future aid to Israel. GENERAL C.Q. BROWN, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: We want to be so good at what we do that our adversaries go, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. General C.Q. Brown joins me here at the Reagan Library. And before serving in Congress, they served several tours of duty on the ground in two of America's longest wars. We sit down with Congressman Michael Waltz and Seth Moulton, veterans for both sides of the aisle, as the fight over defense spending is coming up against the stark deadline. Plus -- JENNIFER GRIFFIN, FOX NEWS NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Is it cool to be patriotic now? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's always been cool to be contrarian and I think right now, it's -- it's been a little contrarian to be very patriotic. BREAM: Our inside look at how cutting-edge technology is shaping the future of warfare and battlefields worldwide. Here are the top headlines making news today. Israel is widening its evacuation orders for Palestinians in southern Gaza, including in and around the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, which both reported heavy bombardment overnight. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling for a total victory against Hamas and pushing back against White House calls to allow the Palestinian Authority to ultimately govern Gaza, claiming the group also calls for Israel's destruction. Meanwhile, in Paris, French authorities are looking into whether terrorism was to blame for a knife and hammer attack on tourists near the Eiffel Tower, leaving a German man dead and two others injured. A 26-year-old French national has been arrested. Let's turn now to Trey Yingst in southern Israel with the very latest on the war in Gaza. After a week-long ceasefire saw more than 100 hostages freed from Gaza, fighting has resumed for a third day. Israeli officials say the ground and air campaign in the second phase of this war against the strip could last for months. New airstrikes overnight targeted tunnel shafts and weapon storage facilities.

Amman, Jordan – The Israeli army released footage on October 22 of its Maglan commando unit deploying a new precision-guided 120mm mortar bomb called the Iron Sting, against Hamas in Gaza. The bomb's Haifa-based manufacturer, Elbit Systems, has been advertising its qualities on the public relations page of its website since March 2021, when it was integrated into the Israeli military. Benny Gantz, then Israel's defence minister and now a part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war cabinet, described the Iron Sting as "designed to engage targets precisely, in both open terrains and urban environments, while reducing the possibility of collateral damage and preventing injury to non-combatants". It's a claim echoed by Mark Regev, Netanyahu's former spokesperson, for the country's overall approach to its war on Gaza, in which, he has said, Israel is "trying to be as surgical as humanly possible". Yet, more than one month after Israel launched the aerial bombardment of Gaza following a surprise Hamas attack, it has killed at least 11,400 Palestinian civilians, and injured 30,000 in the besieged strip and the occupied West Bank.

This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Vigilante violence is at an all-time high in the occupied West Bank. Emboldened by the war in the Gaza Strip and backed by the military, Israeli settlers aiming to annex more and more of the Palestinian territory have launched hundreds of attacks, displacing people from at least 17 communities over the past month while soldiers and settlers have killed nearly 200. And at least three New York nonprofit organizations are calling on donors to help outfit those settlers with combat gear, in a fundraising blitz funneling millions of tax-deductible dollars to the West Bank aggression. By chipping into a "thermal drone matching campaign," donors can help the Long Island–based One Israel Fund buy remote-controlled aerial vehicles for settler militias.

After three weeks of a punishing Israeli bombardment of Gaza, Israel is still refusing to allow international journalists in. News outlets and audiences are entirely reliant on local Palestinian reporters, who risk their lives to provide a window into the war. Meenakshi Ravi reports on how Israelis are documenting and sharing the evidence online. Tariq Nafi examines Israel's use of AI-powered surveillance in Hebron, which has entrenched the Israeli government's control over Palestinians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is starting a US trip in California to talk about technology and artificial intelligence with billionaire businessman Elon Musk. The Israeli leader posted Monday on Musk's social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that he plans to talk with the Tesla CEO "about how we can harness the opportunities and mitigate the risks of AI for the good of civilization." Netanyahu's high-profile visit to the San Francisco Bay Area comes at a time when Musk is facing accusations of tolerating anti-Semitic messages on his social media platform, while Netanyahu is confronting political opposition at home and abroad. Protesters gathered early Monday outside the Fremont, California factory where Tesla makes its cars. The video livestream kicked off shortly before 9:30am with Netanyahu and the Tesla CEO.