State Department photo/ Public Domain(CAIRO) -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on Sunday at an international conference to aid reconstruction in Gaza following the airstrikes and missiles launched between Israeli forces and Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip in recent months.Kerry pledged $212 million in assistance to the Palestinian people, promising that with it would come "immediate relief and reconstruction." The hope, the U.S. secretary of state said, is that the funding will be used to "help promote security and stability, and economic development, and it will provide for immediate distribution of food, medicine, and shelter materials for hundreds of thousands for the coming winter."
Calling the tensions from this past summer "a difficult few months on a difficult issue in a difficult neighborhood," Kerry spoke of the thousands of homes that were damaged or destroyed and the millions of Gaza residents forced to flee for safety.
Kerry said the key to reconstructing Gaza is to ensure the cease-fire between Palestinians and Israelis remains in place. "The United States," he said, "remains fully, totally committed to returning to the negotiations not for the sake of it, but because the goal of this conference and the future of this region demand it."
Kerry said a two-state solution "is even more compelling today" than it was a year ago.
"It's a time for leaders to lead," Kerry said Sunday. "And at a time when extremism, which offers no constructive vision for the future, is capitalizing on the vacuum, it is imperative for all of us to fill that vacuum with a prospect of peace."
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