Occupied Jerusalem Offering the first glimmer of hope for a Gaza cease-fire, the United States on Wednesday said negotiations to broker a truce between the Israeli regime and Hamas are making some progress even if an end to more than two weeks of bloodshed is nowhere near.
“We certainly have made steps forward,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Occupied Jerusalem, where he was meeting for the second time this week with United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon. “There’s still work to be done.”
He did not offer any specifics about the progress he cited in his third day of talks with Mideast leaders. He was in Occupied Jerusalem shortly after landing in Tel Aviv on an Air Force jet - one day after the FAA banned commercial flights into Ben-Gurion Airport because of a Hamas rocket attack nearby.
Ban said he and Kerry were jointly lobbying officials in the region to push Hamas and the Israeli regime to a cease-fire as soon as possible.
“We don’t have much time to wait and lose,” Ban told reporters before the meeting with Kerry. Neither Ban nor Kerry answered media questions during their brief remarks.
The FAA was going to reassess its ban on Ben-Gurion by midday Wednesday in Washington. The European Aviation Safety Agency also issued an advisory saying it “strongly recommends” airlines avoid the airport. Israeli officials said the precautionary US step was unnecessary and “gave terror a prize” by reacting to Hamas’ threats. It also prompted a complaint to Kerry by Netanyahu.
