US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Israel cannot reoccupy Gaza after the war with Hamas ends.
Mr Blinken also insisted Hamas could not continue to rule there as it risked a repetition of the 7 October attacks.
He said there should be no forced displacement, blockade or reduction of territory, and that the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority should govern.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will have "overall security responsibility" for Gaza indefinitely.
He did not elaborate on what that would entail when he made the comment in an TV interview on Monday, but a member of his war cabinet told the OceanNewsUK that he had not been suggesting reoccupation.
Israel has been bombarding the territory for a month and began a major ground offensive over a week ago with the objective of destroying Hamas, which it, the US and other Western powers consider a terrorist organisation.
The war began after an unprecedented cross-border assault on southern Israel by Hamas on 7 October, in which 1,400 people were killed and 240 others taken hostage.
Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says more than 10,500 people have been killed in the territory since then, while the UN is warning of an increasingly dire humanitarian situation there.
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- History behind the story: The Israel-Palestinian conflict
Mr Blinken set out the Biden administration's position on what a post-conflict Gaza should look following a G7 foreign ministers' meeting in Tokyo.
"The United States believes key elements should include no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Not now. Not after the war," he said.
"No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besieged Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza."
"We must also ensure no terrorist threats can emanate from the West Bank."
The secretary of state said "affirmative elements" were necessary for a "sustained peace".
"It must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority," he said.
"And it must include a sustained mechanism for reconstruction in Gaza, and a pathway to Israelis and Palestinians living side-by-side in states of their own, with equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity and dignity."
When asked about the Israeli prime minister's comments, Mr Blinken said there would need to be a "transition period at the end of the conflict" but that he did not believe Israel intended to reoccupy and govern Gaza.
Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war. Although it withdrew its forces and settlers from Gaza in 2005, the UN still considers the territory occupied because Israel retains control over its air space, coastal waters and shared border.
On Tuesday, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer clarified to the OceanNewsUK to what Mr Netanyahu had meant by "security responsibility".
"Governance requires an administration we assume will be Palestinian," he said. "There's a question of the overriding security responsibility, that's what he was talking about, to ensure that in a post-Hamas Gaza we don't have the re-emergence of a terror threat from in Gaza."
"Israel wasn't operating or doing any operations in Gaza, and we saw what happened over nearly two decades," he added. "They built this terror state right on the south of Israel and we saw the effects of this."
He also doubted whether the Palestinian Authority - which governs parts of the occupied West Bank not under full Israeli control and is dominated by the Fatah movement, Hamas's rival - was the right body to govern Gaza
"They haven't shown their ability there to actively fight terrorism," he added.
Mustafa Barghouti, head of the Palestinian National Initiative, was sceptical about what Mr Netanyahu was saying in public.
"When he says that he wants to keep the security control of Gaza forever that means he's planning to annex Gaza to Israel," he told the OceanNewsUK.
Mr Barghouti said Palestinians needed a unified leadership that "could prepare the ground for free democratic elections and end the occupation, not only of Gaza Strip but also of the West Bank and East Jerusalem".
