Occupied Jerusalem: US airlines lifted a flight ban to Israel on Thursday as Washington’s top diplomat cited progress in ending 17 days of bloodshed in Gaza which has killed 718 Palestinians.

The ban was lifted just hours after US Secretary of State John Kerry wrapped up talks in occupied Jerusalem and Ramallah and returned to Cairo to continue pushing regional efforts to ink a ceasefire.

Hamas had hailed the suspension of Tel Aviv flights by US and European airlines as a “great victory for the resistance”.

“The FAA has lifted its restrictions on US airline flights into and out of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport,” the US national aviation agency said early Thursday, two days after imposing a ban on commercial flights when a rocket hit a house very close to the runways.

But it warned the situation was still “very fluid” as the fighting raged on in Gaza. There was no immediate word on whether European airlines would follow suit.

As truce efforts mounted, Hamas’ exiled leader Khaled Meshaal vowed there would be no end to the fighting without the lifting of Israel’s eight-year blockade on Gaza.

“We will not accept any initiative that does not lift the blockade on our people and that does not respect their sacrifices,” he said.

As US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN chief Ban Ki-moon held talks in Jerusalem, they said they had pooled their efforts in the hope of boosting the quest for a truce.

“We are now joining our forces in strength to make a ceasefire as soon as possible,” Ban said as he met Kerry for the second time this week, following initial talks in Cairo on Monday.

“We have in the last 24 hours made some progress in moving towards that goal,” Kerry said as he met president Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, before heading to Tel Aviv for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The men met for about two hours but made no statements after their talks. Kerry then left for Cairo and Netanyahu opened a meeting of his security cabinet.

Ceasefire ‘not enough’

Britain also joined the truce efforts with new Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond holding late-night talks with Abbas, saying a ceasefire was not enough.

Ban also brought up the Gaza conflict in a meeting with Saudi King Abdullah in Jeddah, according to the official SPA news agency.

Palestinian medics said Israeli attacks on Thursday hiked the death toll to 718 with a Gaza-based rights group saying more than 80 per cent of them were civilians.

The Israeli army said three more soldiers were killed in combat inside Gaza on Wednesday, raising the total number of soldiers killed since the start of a ground operation on July 17 to 32.

A Thai farm labourer also died when a rocket fired from Gaza struck the greenhouse where he was working in southern Israel, police said.

Kerry began his regional mission in Cairo, discussing ceasefire proposals with Egyptian President Abdul Fattah Al Sisi, that he said provided a “framework” to end the fighting.

An initial Egyptian proposal calling for a halt to hostilities ahead of talks was accepted by Israel early last week but rejected by Hamas, which wants agreement on a comprehensive package before holding its fire.

A senior Hamas official in Cairo said the group wanted detailed guarantees that Israel would ease its blockade of the enclave, but said he hoped talks would bear fruit “in a few days”.

“The atmosphere in the talks is positive,” he said in a telephone interview.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said 81.5 per cent of the dead were civilians, 24 per cent of them children.

As the violence raged, the UN Human Rights Council voted to launch a probe into Israel’s Gaza offensive, with the US the sole member to vote against as European countries abstained.

A statement from the Israeli prime minister’s office said the council’s decision was “a travesty and should be rejected by decent people everywhere”.