REPORT: Palestinians propose Gaza truce followed by 5-day talks - Fatah official

The deaths in Khan Younis, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya raised the Palestinian death toll to more than 600, including nearly 100 children and many other civilians, since the offensive was launched on July 8, Gaza health officials said.

Meanwhile, local media quoted the Israeli military as saying that an Israeli soldier is missing in the Gaza Strip and presumed dead, two days after the Islamist Hamas group announced they had captured a soldier during clashes.

Israel's Channel 10 News said the military believed the man was killed along with six other troops in an attack on an armored vehicle on Sunday. However, the army has only identified six bodies.

Violence also spread to the occupied West Bank, where medics said soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man while dispersing protesters throwing stones at a military jeep.

Israel said a Palestinian shot at a car and seriously wounded an Israeli in the Nablus area on Tuesday.

The military added that Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinian militants on Monday after they crossed the border from Gaza through two tunnels, as the death toll from the two-week conflict passed 500.

In turn, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said four people were killed and 70 were wounded on Monday at Al-Aqsa hospital, when an Israeli tank shell slammed into its third floor, which housed operating theaters and an intensive care unit.

The International Committee of the Red Cross issued a statement condemning the shelling of the hospital "in the strongest terms". It said the hospital came under direct fire at least four times and life-saving equipment had been severely damaged.

On Monday, 131 rockets were fired from Gaza, 17 of which were shot down by the Iron Dome interceptor system. A three-hour lull in rocket fire ended when several barrages were shot at southern Israeli towns before dawn on Tuesday, and sirens went off to alert people to take cover.

"NOT THE TIME TO TALK OF A CEASEFIRE"

Israel has signaled it is not in a hurry to achieve a truce before reaching a goal of crippling Hamas's militant infrastructure, including rocket arsenals and networks of tunnels threatening Israelis living along the Gaza frontier.

"This is not the time to talk of a ceasefire," Gilad Erdan, communications minister and a member of Netanyahu's inner security cabinet, said on Monday.

Hamas has demanded Israel and Egypt lift a blockade on the coastal territory packed with 1.8 million people, mostly refugees, 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. "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.

Fighters from Hamas, which controls Gaza, and its allies have repeatedly tried to infiltrate Israel over the past week through the tunnels, looking to attack villages and army encampments that dot the border area.

Netanyahu sent in Israeli ground forces on Thursday to destroy the tunnels and the militants' missile stockpile.

POSITIONS

France's foreign minister said on Tuesday that the 600 person death toll in Gaza was not acceptable and that Israel had to immediately stop "the massacres and attacks".    

"It was not acceptable that a country was threatened by missiles and that missiles landed on it, but the response must be proportionate," Laurent Fabius told TF1 television.       

"When we are talking about 600 dead, it is obviously something that we can't accept. The massacres and attacks must stop immediately."   

Earlier, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Arab League Secretary-General Nabil el-Araby for talks in Cairo as part of international efforts to end a 15-day conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Kerry, who arrived in Cairo on Monday, said during talks with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, that the United States would provide $47 million in humanitarian aid for Gaza.

Washington is "deeply concerned about the consequences of Israel's appropriate and legitimate effort to defend itself," Kerry said.

"No country can stand by when rockets are attacking it." "But always, in any kind of conflict, there is a concern about civilians - about children, women, communities that are caught in it," Kerry said.

At a joint news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri, US’ Kerry said that an initiative from Egypt is the framework to end fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

"There is a framework ... to end the violence and that framework is the Egyptian initiative," Kerry said.

After meeting the president of Egypt, Kerry said he held constructive talks with top Egyptian officials in a bid to end fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Egypt's request, made on behalf of the Arab Group of countries, was backed by the requisite minimum of 16 member states of the 47-member forum, including China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, it said.

Kerry plans to stay in Cairo until Wednesday morning and has not currently scheduled an end to his regional trip, which may include talks with officials from Qatar, a Gulf state which has relatively close ties to the Islamist Palestinian group Hamas and hosts its leader, Khaled Meshaal.

It is worth noting that the United Nations Human Rights Council will hold an emergency session on Israel's assault on Gaza on Wednesday at the request of Egypt, Palestine and Islamic states, a UN statement said on Monday.