Israel is likely to have committed war crimes in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said Thursday, a day after the army announced five criminal investigations into incidents involving its forces.

The European Union warned Wednesday that violence could re-ignite in Gaza within "months" if Israel and Hamas fail to consolidate a fragile ceasefire through serious talks.

The EU ambassador to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, and John Gatt-Rutter, envoy to the West Bank and Gaza, spoke to journalists in Jerusalem just two weeks after a bloody and destructive conflict in the tiny coastal territory that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians and 73 people on the Israeli side.

Israel's army has launched five criminal investigations into incidents involving its forces during the Gaza war, a top legal official said on Wednesday, two weeks after a truce took hold.

The United Nations and international rights groups have condemned Israel for numerous attacks which resulted in heavy civilian casualties, in a conflict that killed more than 2,140 Palestinians. 

Hamas's exiled deputy leader said Wednesday that indirect talks with Israel to consolidate a Gaza ceasefire are to resume in Cairo in mid-September.

Fifty days of deadly fighting between Israel and Gaza militants which killed more than 2,140 Palestinians and 73 on the Israeli side, ended on August 26 with an open-ended truce agreement.

Egypt announced Tuesday that it would host a donors' conference on financing the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip following the devastating war with Israel, to be held on October 12.

The conference will be held in Cairo, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri said after a meeting with his Norwegian counterpart, Boerge Brende.

The United Nations and the Palestinian government called Tuesday for international donors to provide $550 million in aid to help hundreds of thousands of Gazans affected by a devastating war  with Israel.

The appeal comes two weeks after Israel and Hamas ended 50 days of bloodshed that killed more than 2,100 people, mostly civilians, and a month ahead of a donors' conference in Cairo.

Hamas on Monday accused Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas of trying to sabotage a fragile reconciliation agreement after he accused them of running "a shadow government" in Gaza. 

After two weeks with no water following Israel's 50-day offensive, Abu Osama took matters into his own hands, and like hundreds of others, sank a well beside his Gaza home.

After nearly two months of Israeli bombardment, power cuts and water shortages, he seized upon the ceasefire to get down to work.

The reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, devastated during 50 days of war with Israel, will cost six billion euros ($7.7 billion), Palestinian experts said in a report Thursday.

The Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction, a Palestinian Authority body that oversees the implementation of donor-financed projects, said the process would take "five years if Israel removed its blockade over Gaza entirely."

Standing in front of the crumbling control tower of Gaza's devastated airport, one-time air traffic controller Anis Arafat dreams of the day planes will land and take off here again.