U.S. lifts ban on flights to Israel as Gaza toll tops 700 --- (Reuters) - Israel won a partial reprieve from the economic pain of its Gaza war on Thursday with the lifting of a U.S. ban on commercial flights to Tel Aviv, as fighting pushed the Palestinian death toll over 700. -- A truce remained elusive despite intensive mediation bids. Palestinians said residents of two southern villages were trapped by tank shelling, preventing evacuation of casualties. -- Israel says it needs more time to eradicate cross-border tunnels used by Hamas for attacks, while the Palestinian Islamists demand the blockade on the Gaza Strip be lifted. -- With Washington's encouragement, Egypt has been trying to mediate a limited humanitarian ceasefire. One Cairo official said on Wednesday that could go into effect by the weekend, in time for the Eid al-Fitr festival, Islam's biggest annual celebration, which follows the fasting month of Ramadan. -- But a senior U.S. official described any truce by the weekend as unlikely, as did an Israeli cabinet minister who said the hunt for tunnels would take at least four days to complete. --- The death toll in Gaza reached 718 on Thursday as Israeli tank fire and other pre-dawn assaults killed 26 people in the Hamas-dominated coastal enclave, including six members of the same family, Palestinian health officials said. -- In southern Khuzaa and Abassan villages, they said, Israeli shelling left dead and wounded under rubble, while medical crews could not risk attending. -- Israel has lost 32 soldiers to clashes inside Gaza and with Hamas raiders who have slipped across the fortified frontier in tunnels. Rocket and mortar shelling by Hamas and other Palestinian guerrillas has killed three civilians in Israel. -- Such shelling surged last month as Israel cracked down on Hamas in the occupied West Bank, triggering the July 8 air and sea barrage in Gaza that escalated into an invasion a week ago. --- Though Israel's Iron Dome rocket interceptor has shot down most of the rockets fired from Gaza, one that came close to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport on Tuesday prompted the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to bar American flights there. - More, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/24/us-mideast-gaza-idUSKBN0FT06I20140724