This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The White House on Wednesday dismissed a report that the US is considering building a temporary military base on the border of the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.

“This article was based on a single piece of paper, an inquiry that somebody in the Department of Navy made about an idea that may happen in the future, and this reporter deemed that as an official plan, and ran with a story that the United States is looking into it. I checked with the highest levels of the United States federal government.

“This is not something the United States is interested in being engaged in … it’s not something we are currently involved in right now,” spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, citing anonymous Israeli officials, said Washington seeks to establish a large military base in the Gaza border area, which would mark “a significant escalation of US activity in Israel.”

It said the project would be “the first large-scale American military installation on Israeli territory, underscoring a deepening US commitment to post-war stabilization efforts in Gaza.”

Leavitt said President Donald Trump has been “very clear he doesn’t want to see boots on the ground with respect to what’s happening in the Middle East.”

“We’ve made great peace, we’ve made great progress with the peace plan in Gaza and we want to continue to see that move forward,” she added.

READ: US plans to establish $500M military base near Gaza border: Israeli media