The highest-ranking American delegation to visit the Gaza Strip in years toured bomb-damaged buildings today and blamed the enclave's Hamas rulers for provoking Israel's wrath with cross-border rocket attacks.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry and two members of the House of Representatives, Brian Baird and Keith Ellison, shunned Hamas during tours that came one month after Israel ended its 22-day Gaza offensive.
It was the highest-level visit by US legislators to the Gaza Strip since a Palestinian uprising against Israel erupted in 2000, US officials in the region said. Kerry earlier toured the Israeli border town of Sderot, a frequent target of rockets.
Mr Kerry, a member of US president Barack Obama's Democratic party, visited the bombed-out American School in the northern Gaza Strip and asked administrators whether Israel was letting in enough supplies for the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million residents.
Israel allows humanitarian aid into the impoverished enclave but has ruled out fully opening its border crossings to materials needed for reconstruction until Hamas frees an Israeli soldier captured in a 2006 cross-border raid.
"I know President Obama is committed to trying to resolve some very, very difficult issues," said Mr Kerry, escorted by UN security personnel during his brief tour of the school.
Sharhabeel al-Zaeem, a member of the school's board, told Mr Kerry that Israel was supplying only "the minimum" of what was needed, and complained that ordinary Palestinians felt isolated because of the Israeli-led and Western-backed blockade of Gaza.
"Your political leadership needs to make critical decisions and make it clear how it is willing to move to make peace, and those fundamental decisions have not been made," Mr Kerry told Mr Zaeem and others at the school.
"Secondly, your political leadership needs to understand that any nation that has rockets coming into it over many years, threatening its citizens, is going to respond."
Mr Zaeem responded by comparing the plight of Palestinians in Hamas-ruled Gaza to a hostage crisis. "A police officer won't be able to take a decision to destroy the whole building, killing all the hostages and the kidnappers?" he asked.
Mr Kerry said: "You know, what is important is not to have a debate that goes backwards. It is important to go forwards. There is a clear path forward... Help us find peace."
He did not elaborate on the path forward.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum described Kerry's visit as a "step in the right direction to end the isolation of the Gaza Strip" but described his comments about Hamas as "unfair to the democratic choice of the Palestinian people".
During his visit to a UN compound in Gaza, Mr Kerry was given a letter from Hamas to deliver to Mr Obama.
UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness said the letter had been left for Kerry at the gate of the compound and that he did not know the content. "We don't open other people's mail," Mr Gunness said.
Mr Kerry's office had no immediate comment.
The war in Gaza, which Israel launched with the declared aim of halting militants' rocket fire, killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, destroyed some 5,000 homes and decimated much of Gaza's infrastructure, local officials say.
Mr Kerry, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for president in 2004, also visited UN facilities and met aid groups.
In Gaza and during an earlier visit in Israel's Sderot, Mr Kerry said the US policy of shunning Hamas was unchanged.
Reuters