Israel's Supreme Court struck down a key component of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's contentious judicial overhaul Monday, delivering a landmark decision that could reopen the fissures in Israeli society that preceded the country's ongoing war against Hamas.

The planned overhaul sparked months of mass protests, threatened to trigger a constitutional crisis between the judicial and legislative branches of government, and rattled the cohesion of Israel's powerful military.

Israeli troops killed four Palestinians during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, sources on both sides said, with the army describing the four as "terrorists".

"Four Palestinians were martyred by occupation bullets in the town of Azzun," the Palestinian health ministry said.

Israel warned its war against Hamas will continue throughout 2024 as unrelenting strikes killed two dozen people in Gaza and the Palestinian militant group fired a rocket barrage at the stroke of midnight.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a New Year's message that some of the 300,000 army reservists would get a break from the war, in order to prepare for the "prolonged fighting" ahead.

The U.S. military said that its forces opened fire on Houthi rebels after they attacked a cargo ship in the Red Sea, killing several of them in an escalation of the maritime conflict linked to the war in Gaza. "We're going to act in a self-defense going forward," a White House official said.

In a series of statements, the U.S. Central Command said the crew of the USS Gravely destroyer first shot down two anti-ship ballistic missiles fired at the Singapore-flagged Maersk Hangzhou late Saturday, after the vessel reported getting hit by a missile earlier that evening as it sailed through the Southern Red Sea.

Thousands of Israeli soldiers are being shifted out of the Gaza Strip, the military said Monday, in the first significant drawdown of troops since the war began as forces continued to bear down on the main city in the southern half of the enclave.

The troop movement could signal that fighting is being scaled back in some areas of Gaza, particularly in the northern half where the military has said it is close to assuming operational control. Israel has been under pressure from its chief ally, the United States, to begin to switch to lower-intensity fighting.

Air strikes in eastern Syria, "likely" carried out by Israel, killed at least 23 pro-Iran fighters Saturday, a war monitor said, reporting four more dead in the country's north.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "23 pro-Iranian fighters," including five Syrians, four from Lebanon's Hezbollah, six Iraqis and eight Iranians, were killed in at least nine pre-dawn air strikes near the Iraqi border.

Palestinians end a dark year on Sunday, with no end in sight to the deadliest Israeli military offensive on Gaza that followed Hamas' unprecedented cross-border operation in south Israel.

There has been no respite from Israel's air raids, artillery fire or ground fighting with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, to the despair of Palestinians surviving the onslaught.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel's war on Hamas in Gaza will continue for "many more months," pushing back against persistent international cease-fire calls after mounting civilian deaths, hunger and mass displacement in the besieged enclave.

Netanyahu thanked the Biden administration for its continued backing, including approval for a new emergency weapons sale, the second this month, and prevention of a U.N. Security Council resolution seeking an immediate cease-fire. Israel argues that ending the war now would mean victory for Hamas, a stance shared by the Biden administration, which at the same time urged Israel to do more to avoid harm to Palestinian civilians.

The Israeli army said early Saturday that it was carrying out strikes in Syria after two rockets fired from the country fell into territory under its control.

Fighting raged Saturday across Gaza, where displaced Palestinians are "exhausted" with no end in sight to war between the besieged territory's Hamas rulers and Israel, now in its 13th week.