Israel has suggested in the past it was considering a buffer zone inside Gaza, but the sources said it was now presenting them to Arab states as part of its future security plans for Gaza, Reuters reports.

A US official, who declined to be identified, said Israel had “floated” the buffer zone idea without saying to whom. But the official also repeated Washington’s opposition to any plan that reduced the size of Palestinian territory.

A senior Israeli security source said the buffer zone idea was “being examined”, adding: “It is not clear at the moment how deep this will be and whether it could be 1km or 2km or hundreds of metres (inside Gaza).”

Any encroachment into Gaza, which is about 40km long and between about 5km and 12km wide, would cram its 2.3 million people into an even smaller area.