“We’re getting toward a time now when hard decisions need to be made,” he told a news conference in Tel Aviv at the end of his fourth visit to the region since he took office in February.

Kerry has been pressing Israel and the Palestinians to resume peace talks that broke down in September 2010.

Meeting Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank and Israel’s premier Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Thursday, Kerry admitted there was scepticism and cynicism about his bid to broker new talks.

“I know this region well enough to know there is scepticism, in some quarters there is cynicism, and there are reasons for it. There have been bitter years of disappointment,” he said.

But he insisted: “It is our hope that by being methodical, careful, patient, but detailed and tenacious, that we can lay on a path ahead that can conceivably surprise people and certainly exhaust the possibilities for peace.”