international. i m hala gorani. on the day in jerusalem what could be an important day of diplomacy in the gaza/hamas conflict. we ve already seen one huge explosion. take a look. this happened a few hours ago. a towering plume of smoke rising into the sky. these are, by the way, live images coming to us, i believe, of what is gaza in the background. perhaps from the israeli side of the border is my guess. live images just after 10 p.m. local time. cause of the blast undetermined. secretary of state john kerry is in cairo along with secretary-general, ban ki-moon. kerry will try to broker a
now saying because of the security concerns, and the reason is, the status of going into gaza or fighting in gaza have been ones that come about every few years. they believe a cease-fire is not going to edged the threat gaza opposes to them. maybe it requires more long-term presence of the military to root out hamas and then return gaza back to palestinian control. martin savidge, thanks very much in jerusalem. let s turn our attention to our other big stories. five days off downing of ma lie sha airlines flight 17. a plane is set to fly the remains on to amsterdam. dutch foreign ministry tells cnn it could be another 15 hours
the fact that this has been tried several times before and each time it doesn t work. i mean, unless israel were to go in and reoccupy gaza, clearly hamas and other extremist groups can rearm themselves and apparently very well in the subsequent years in between these flare-ups and there s the fact of what mr. byrnebaum was saying they don t have any surface-to-air missiles all. these are unguided surface-to-surface rockets. they don t pose any threat to any aircraft. there s been great concern about the situation ramping up, more deaths on each side. we also know that secretary of state john kerry is said to be trying to broker a cease-fire. are you feeling confident there s any possibility of that? i wouldn t use the word confident. i m hopeful and i m not hopeful in the next 24 or 48 hours, but i m hopeful that by the end of the week or weekend, we could
truce, which hasn t happened in the past. let s talk about the situation on the ground. it is safe to say, if you look at the death toll, it is spiraling out of control. the gaza health ministry is now reporting 583 palestinians killed. the united nations is saying between 70 and 80% of the deaths in gaza are civilians. at least 120 are children. on the israeli side, 27 is the death toll. all soldiers. two civilians have been killed as well. let s go live to gaza. cnn s karl penhaul is standing by. karl, we were showing images of a big explosion in gaza to our viewers around the world. do we know what that was? reporter: it could, if you re saying those images were coming from the israeli side, as you were talking, there was a large explosion, probably a mile, mile and a half just southwest of
declaring a cease-fire is never the problem really. it s making sure the cease-fire holds up and that s where israelis tend to be skeptical. they do not think la mass wants to stop. what about appetite within isra israel. even though everyday israelis might have prepared themselves, they are taking losses. 27 israeli casualties. at what point will they say this is too much for our side to be losing? yagain, you know, trying to measure something we re fully aware of. they aren t just conflicted over the high cost of civilian lives and blood over soldiers. some say, look, we need to reoccupy gaza once more.