US will not send troops into Gaza, insists Vance

US Vice President JD Vance said on Tuesday that the US would not send troops into Gaza, reiterating a pledge made by US President Donald Trump and US officials multiple times.

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“There are not going to be American boots on the ground in Gaza. The President of the United States has made that very clear. All of our military leadership has made that very clear,” Vance said at a press conference in Kiryat Gat, southern Israel, where a US-led mission is monitoring the Gaza ceasefire.

Vance added that the US would limit itself to providing “useful coordination.”

Although some 200 US troops were recently sent to Israel, Vance emphasised that they would not be on the ground in Gaza. But he said officials are beginning to “conceptualise what that international security force would look like” for the territory. Vance and other envoys projected optimism on Tuesday about Gaza ‘s fragile ceasefire agreement, calling progress better than anticipated as they visited a new center in Israel for civilian and military cooperation.

Vance noted flareups of violence in recent days but said the ceasefire that began on Oct. 10 is going “better than I expected” after two years of war between Israel and Hamas.

The Trump administration’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, added that “we are exceeding where we thought we would be at this time.”