U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, center, meets with foreign officials. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

After six days of exhaustive meetings and stops in Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Paris, Secretary of State John Kerry came home Sunday with only a few fitful hours of peace in Gaza that proved fleeting.

Israel and the Palestinian territory's Hamas rulers observed a 12-hour humanitarian cease-fire on Saturday. But they couldn't agree to extend the truce on Sunday and the cycle of attacks resumed.
The inability of the U.S. and others to achieve more from a week of diplomatic effort has exposed the changes sweeping the region, and the divisions that have developed between the U.S. and its Mideast allies, including Israel, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and many leading Arab states.Late Sunday night, Israel said it was easing up on its air, sea and land attacks on Gaza, providing a lull as Muslims headed into Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. But the military said it would still strike back if militants from Gaza attacked.
In a sign of growing U.S. exasperation, President Barack Obama spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, calling for what the White House described as "an immediate, unconditional humanitarian cease-fire" to halt the hostilities while negotiators work on details of a long-term deal.
Late Sunday night, the United Nations Security Council also agreed to call for an immediate cease-fire.
The developments capped a week of U.S. diplomacy that bore little fruit.
As fighting raged in nearby Gaza, Mr. Netanyahu met Mr. Kerry late Wednesday night at the headquarters of the Israeli Defense Forces in downtown Tel Aviv. Some U.S. officials expected the meeting to last five or six hours while the two tried to forge a cease-fire.
But after just two hours, the meeting broke with no agreement. Mr. Netanyahu left fuming over the U.S. government's decision to ban American air carriers from flying to Ben Gurion International Airport here for at least 24 hours after a Hamas rocket from Gaza landed nearby. Flights have since resumed.
The tense session, described by officials involved in the deliberations, was among the flash points in a week of high stakes Obama administration diplomacy that brought the full weight of American prestige to the mission of halting the bombardment of Israel and Gaza.
A core impediment to Mr. Kerry's mission, according to officials involved in the negotiations, were sharply contrasting views between Israel and the U.S. on the nature of Hamas's threat and the best path to neutralizing it. Members of Mr. Netanyahu's government are pushing the U.S. for the diplomatic space to launch broader military operations to dismantle Hamas's missile arsenal and network of tunnels from Gaza into Israel to ensure another conflict—a fourth in a decade—won't erupt when the current hostilities end.
U.S. officials, however, have argued to Mr. Netanyahu that his military offensive has already made significant strides in degrading Hamas's war machine and Israel risked sparking a broader Palestinian uprising, including in the West Bank, if a cease-fire isn't agreed to soon.
"Palestinians are seeing their people killed. So there's a lot of tension there," said a senior official who traveled with Mr. Kerry. "So, yes, there's a risk there."
More than 200 Palestinians under age 18 have been killed during three weeks of fighting in Gaza. WSJ's Nicholas Casey reports from Gaza City, where Israel's latest military invasion is taking a heavy toll on children.
The shifting balance of power in the Mideast in recent years, and political divisions among Washington's regional allies, added an extra dimension of difficulty to the U.S. efforts over the past week, according to U.S. and Arab officials.
Mr. Kerry devoted much of his time to discussing the terms of a cease-fire with the Egyptian government and with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, –traditionally key players in the region's peace processes.
But U.S. officials acknowledged that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and Mr. Abbas have little to no influence over Hamas's political leadership, raising questions about why Mr. Kerry devoted so much time seeking their counsel.
Searching for a more direct channel to Hamas, Mr. Kerry changed course and opened a broad dialogue with the organization's chief financial and diplomatic backers: Qatar and Turkey. The Qatari capital Doha currently hosts the political leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, and Mr. Kerry began relying on Qatari officials to pass messages to him.
Engaging these countries posed its own risks, according to U.S. and Arab officials.
Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia cautioned Mr. Kerry against relying on Qatar and Turkey, citing their strong financial and diplomatic support for Hamas and its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mr. Kerry invested heavily in a broader peace deal that collapsed three months ago, fueling recriminations on all sides. He plunged into his latest diplomacy July 21 by initially seeking to build on a cease-fire proposal put forward by Egypt two weeks ago and that was immediately accepted by Israel.
Hamas rejected it, saying it wasn't consulted and its demands had not been met. After that, Mr. Kerry and his team tried to draw in the group by working with Arab and European states and the United Nations to provide greater assurances that Gaza's mounting economic woes would be addressed if rocket fire into Israel stopped.
Mr. Kerry and his diplomatic partners also concluded a permanent cease-fire might be too ambitious at that stage, due to the intensity of the fighting. Instead, they devised to put in place a one-week "pause" to coincide with the end of Ramadan.
Israel, however, grew increasingly lukewarm as the diplomacy progressed. Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli officials believed the emerging terms of the proposal being discussed provided substantial economic perks to Hamas without providing any guarantees that the militia's rocket arsenal and tunnel networks would be destroyed.
A draft document outlining some of the terms of a cease-fire only vaguely mentioned that an agreement would "address all security issues," according to U.S. and Israeli officials.
Moderate Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said there were ideas "that were totally unacceptable" to Israel in the proposal. "The bottom line was a boost to extremist forces in the area,'' she said in an interview with Israel Radio. "`It was bringing Qatar and Turkey into the issue, when they are part of the broader world view of the Muslim Brotherhood."
Relations between Mr. Netanyahu's government and the Obama administration were tested further by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration announcement last Tuesday of a 24-hour ban on U.S. aviation traffic. Mr. Netanyahu and his ministers viewed the move as a White House attempt to use economic pressure to force Mr. Netanyahu into a cease-fire—a charge U.S. officials denied.

Mr. Kerry, lacking a deal, returned to Cairo. By Friday night, matters with Israel came to a head. Mr. Kerry, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry convened a news conference at a Cairo hotel in the hope of announcing the one-week temporary cease-fire. But after a full day of negotiations, Mr. Netanyahu's cabinet ultimately rejected the U.S.-brokered proposal.Mr. Netanyahu moved to protest the U.S. decisions by driving to Ben Gurion and greeting former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg after he flew into Tel Aviv on an El Al jet in a sign of solidarity with Israel. Israel's leader noticeably didn't offer Mr. Kerry such a gesture when he flew into the same airport on the same day.
The best Israel and Hamas agreed to was a 12-hour humanitarian pause.
Undeterred by Israel's decision, the U.S. team decided to broaden the negotiations by staging a mini-summit in Paris on Saturday. It included the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy, the U.K., representatives of the European Union and the top diplomats of Qatar and Turkey. Europeans have been very vocal in calling for an immediate cease-fire.
Mr. Kerry ultimately left France Saturday night without a long-term cease-fire, but with continued hopes that the diplomatic negotiations he oversaw would eventually end the fighting. Israeli and Hamas officials continue to alternate between fighting and talking truce.
A rupture between the U.S. and Israel appeared real.
"Give us diplomatic cover in the U.N. The best thing that Kerry can do is stay out,'' said Michael Oren, who served as Israel's ambassador to the U.S. until last year. "We need time to do the job, we need to inflict a painful and unequivocal blow on Hamas. Anything less would be a Hamas victory."
—Asa Fitch in Ramallah and Nicholas Casey in Gaza City contributed to this article.


2b)  Danny Dayan: Obama, Kerry Caused 'Long-Term Damage'