CAIRO (AP) -- The U.S. and Egypt sought Tuesday to find an end to two weeks of bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, and officials raised the possibility of restarting stalled peace talks between Israel and Palestinian authorities as a necessary step to avoid sustained violence.
It's unlikely that Washington is ready to wade back into the morass of peace negotiations that broke off last April after nearly nine months of shuttle diplomacy by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. But the new round of fighting between Israel and Hamas militants who control Gaza has reached the level of violence that U.S. officials warned last spring would happen without an enduring truce.
Kerry, meeting with Egypt's president and other high-level officials, stopped short of advocating a new round of peace talks. Still, he said his discussions in Cairo were designed to "hopefully find not only a way to a cease-fire, but a way to deal with the underlying issues, which are very complicated."
The U.S. and Israel backs Egypt's proposed cease-fire plan but Hamas rejects it. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri said Tuesday's talks were focused "to not only resolve this issue, but also to set in motion once again the peace process that Secretary Kerry has been so actively involved in so as to end this ongoing conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis."
In a separate meeting with Kerry, Arab league President Nabil Elaraby called the Gaza bloodshed a "massacre." More than 600 Palestinians and 29 Israelis have been killed since the new war began July 8.
"People are dying in the streets in large numbers," Elaraby told Kerry. "And what is needed is for all hostile acts should end as soon as possible. Just like someone is bleeding, and you need a Band-Aid, but that is not enough. You need more to be able to survive."
Israeli aircraft have hit more than 70 targets in the Gaza Strip in the last day, including the home of the late leader of Hamas' military wing, five mosques and a football stadium, according to a Gaza police official. At the same time, an Israeli defense official told The Associated Press that an Israeli soldier is missing following a deadly battle in Gaza over the weekend, and it is not known whether he is dead or alive. In the past Israel has paid a heavy price to retrieve soldiers captured by its enemies.
The peace talks withered in April after a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic maneuvers between Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that eroded all trust or progress the two sides had built up over negotiations that began a year ago. In the final blow, Israel shelved the talks after Abbas struck a deal to create a reconciliation government with Hamas.
