GAZA: Israel pounded targets across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, saying no ceasefire was near as top US and United Nations diplomats pursued talks on halting the fighting that has claimed more than 600 lives.

John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, held discussions in 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.

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.

Livni said the Hamas demands were unacceptable to both Israel and Egypt.

John Kerry, dispatched by US President Barack Obama to the Middle East to seek a ceasefire, 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 Mr 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.”

Egypt was key to securing an end to a previous bout of Gaza fighting in 2012, but the country’s new leadership is openly hostile to Hamas, possibly complicating the negotiations.

“We hope (Kerry’s) visit will result in a ceasefire that provides the necessary security for the Palestinian people and that we can commence to address the medium and long-term issues related to Gaza,” Shukri said.

DEATH TOLL RISES: With the conflict entering its third week, the Palestinian death toll rose to 616, including nearly 100 children and many other civilians.

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.

The Israeli military claimed 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 2008-2009.

Two Israeli civilians have also been killed by Palestinian rocket fire into Israel.

Addressing reporters, with the Israeli premier at his side, the UN chief 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.”

An Egyptian official who attended some of Mr Kerry’s meetings said Ban Ki-moon, the UN chief, was working toward reaching a humanitarian truce, perhaps lasting for several days, to get aid into the territory. “The sensitivities between Egypt and Hamas are what is halting a final inclusive ceasefire deal,” the official said.

Palestinian President Mahmud 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.

102,000 displaced: With Israeli shells and bombs hitting Gaza day and night, thousands of people have fled districts close to the border. The main UN agency in Gaza, UNWRA, said almost 102,000 people had taken shelter in 69 of its schools.

The UNRWA said it found rockets hidden in a vacant Gaza school near two buildings housing refugees who have fled, in the second such instance of militants accused of storing weaponry in a school during the latest offensive.

A UNRWA statement said it had removed its employees from the building where the rockets were found, adding that it “strongly and unequivocally condemns the group or groups responsible”.

Israel has signalled it is in no hurry to achieve a truce before reaching its goal of crippling Hamas’s militant infrastructure, including rocket arsenals and networks of tunnels threatening Israelis living along the Gaza frontier.

Hamas has said it will not cease hostilities until its demands are met, including that Israel and Egypt lift their blockade of Gaza and its 1.8 million people, and that Israel release several hundred Palestinians detained during a search last month for three Jewish teenagers later found dead.

Israel blamed the killings on Hamas, and their deaths, along with the revenge slaying of a Palestinian teen, were factors in a flare-up of violence along the Israel-Gaza border last month that escalated into the current fighting.

“The world must understand that Gaza has decided to end the blockade by its blood and its heroism,” deputy Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a televised address on Monday.

In Israel, the military said it had identified the remains of six soldiers killed in an attack on their armoured vehicle in Gaza on Sunday and was trying to identify the seventh.

Prompting widespread celebrations in Gaza, Hamas’s armed wing announced on Sunday that it had captured a soldier. It displayed a photo ID and army serial number of the man, but did not show any image of him in their hands.

The Israeli military believes it was impossible for anyone to have survived the direct hit on the armoured vehicle in which the missing man was travelling.

Israel has agreed to mass releases of Palestinian prisoners in the past to secure the freedom of captured soldiers, or even for the return of the bodies of its citizens.

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2014