UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks as Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah watches during a joint press conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday.
Reuters/Gaza/Jerusalem
Israel pounded targets across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, saying no ceasefire was near as top US and UN diplomats pursued talks on halting the fighting that has claimed more than 600 lives.
US Secretary of State John Kerry held discussions in neighbouring Egypt, while UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv and planned to see the Palestinian prime minister in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday.
However, there was no let-up in the fighting around Gaza, with plumes of black smoke spiralling into the sky, and Israeli shells raining down on the coastal Palestinian enclave.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) banned US carriers from flying to or from Ben-Gurion International Airport, after a rocket fired from Gaza struck near the airport's fringes, injuring two people.
European airlines including Germany's Lufthansa, Air-France and Dutch airline KLM said they were halting flights there too. Israel's flagship carrier El Al continued flights as usual.
Israel launched its offensive on July 8 to halt missile salvoes out of the Gaza Strip by Hamas, the dominant group in the coastal territory, which was angered by a crackdown on its supporters in the occupied West Bank and suffering economic hardship because of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade.
"A ceasefire is not near," said Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, viewed as the most dovish member of Netanyahu's inner security cabinet. "I see no light at the end of the tunnel," she told Israel's Army Radio.
Dispatched by US President Barack Obama to the Middle East to seek a ceasefire, Kerry held talks on Tuesday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri.
"There is a framework ... to end the violence and that framework is the Egyptian initiative," Kerry said at a news conference with Shukri.
"For the sake of thousands of innocent families whose lives have been shaken and destroyed by this conflict, on all sides, we hope we can get there as soon as possible."
With the conflict entering its third week, the Palestinian death toll rose to 616, including nearly 100 children and many other civilians, Gaza health officials said.
The latest strikes killed a six-month-old infant and a 24-year-old Palestinian in northern Gaza, in addition to a Palestinian bombed on a motorcycle elsewhere in the territory, Palestinian health officials said.
The Israeli military said it had killed 183 militants.
Israel's casualties also mounted, with the military announcing the deaths of two more soldiers, bringing the number of army fatalities to 27 - almost three times as many as were killed in the last ground invasion of Gaza, in a 2008-2009 war.
Two Israeli civilians have also been killed by Palestinian rocket fire into Israel.
Addressing reporters, with Netanyahu at his side, Ban said: "My message to Israelis and Palestinians is the same: Stop fighting. Start talking. And take on the root causes of the conflict, so we are not back to the same situation in another six months or a year."
Kerry has said the US would provide $47mn in humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip. He plans to stay in Cairo until Wednesday morning but has no set departure date from the region.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Western-backed Fatah movement also proposed a formula for ending the fighting, calling for an immediate ceasefire followed by five days of negotiations, Palestinian official Azzam al-Ahmed said in Cairo.
