US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday called for all sides in the Gaza conflict to work towards a durable ceasefire and condemned continued rocket attacks on Israel.
"I am troubled by the continuing rocket attacks coming out of Gaza," Mrs Clinton said at a press conference following an international donor conference to raise funds for rebuilding Gaza.
"We call upon all (parties) to move toward a durable ceasefire," she said.
"But it is very difficult for any country to just sit and take rockets falling on its people, that is the crux of the Israeli problem. How are they supposed to respond when they continue to have that kind of attack."
Egypt has been trying to mediate a long-term ceasefire between Israel and Hamas since the end of the Jewish state's three-week war on the Gaza Strip on January 18.
But Israel has linked any truce and a lifting of its blockade of Gaza to the release of a soldier captured by Gaza militants in June 2006.
On the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Mrs Clinton said: "The US is prepared to engage in aggressive diplomacy with all sides in pursuit of a comprehensive settlement that brings peace and security to Israel and its Arab neighbours".
Mrs Clinton is leaving Egypt for talks with Israeli leaders today on Middle East peace efforts.
Meanwhile Top world diplomats yesterday appealed for rival Palestinian factions to reconcile, saying that it is vital if the hobbled Middle East peace process is to get back on track.
The plea, made at a donors' conference in Egypt, came despite the fact that a Palestinian unity government including Hamas would prove a highly delicate issue for Washington, which regards the Islamists as a terror group.
Leaders of the Middle East Quartet grouping the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States met for informal talks on the sidelines of the Gaza aid gathering in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.
Mrs Clinton, making her first visit to the region for President Barack Obama who has vowed to pursue Middle East peace vigorously, signalled that Hamas would continue to be ostracised.
"We want to strengthen the Palestinian Authority" of secular President Mahmud Abbas, a senior US official quoted her as saying.
Earlier Mrs Clinton told the donors' gathering that aid to rebuild the Gaza Strip, devastated in a 22-day Israeli onslaught in December and January that killed at least 1,300 Palestinians, cannot be separated from the peace process.
The US official quoted the new Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who helped to broker peace in Northern Ireland, as saying: "We hope that there will be Palestinian unity in a way that will advance the two states solution."
In 2003, the Quartet adopted a "roadmap" intended to lead by stages to a permanent settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, based on the principle of two states.
"We want to figure out how to promote Palestinian reconciliation," the US official quoted UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as saying, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged the Islamists to rejoin the Palestinian fold.
Tony Blair, Britain's former Prime Minister and now the Quartet's special Middle East envoy, was quoted as saying that "the decisions of the next few weeks will determine how we move forward on the next few years."