As Americans went to the polls Tuesday in midterm elections for Congress, U.S. President Donald Trump made a surprise announcement that the United States would end its annual financial assistance to Israel at the end of this year.
Trump told Fox News that Democrats were using the roughly $4 billion in annual aid as a pretext to criticize Republicans, and he could not allow that to continue.
Trump also claimed Israel no longer needed the funding, and he had reached an agreement on the matter with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu several months ago.
Netanyahu has not yet provided official comment.
The United States and Israel signed a 10-year memorandum of understanding on military assistance in 2016, covering fiscal years 2019 through 2028. In his remarks to Fox News, Trump did not explain how the funding would be halted by the end of this year.
MBN contacted both the White House and U.S. State Department but received no response by time of publication.
An end to U.S. military aid would amount to losing 8.7% of Israel’s current defense budget of about $45 billion, marking a major shift in relations between the two countries, affecting not only the Israeli military, but calculations in domestic politics mere days after an inconclusive Knesset election.
In a statement, leader of the opposition bloc Gadi Eisenkot said the fact that Israel’s security establishment learned of such a shift through the media demonstrated that Netanyahu could no longer be trusted, and even in his now-caretaker position, should be replaced.
Israeli news site Walla also reported that the Finance Ministry had been taken by surprise by the announcement.
Rafael S. Cohen, director of the National Security Policy Program at the RAND Corporation, has said Trump repeatedly questions the value of foreign aid to any potential recipient.
In remarks to MBN, Cohen said the president’s announcement was entirely consistent with that position. Cohen also noted Trump’s record of reversing previous policies.
Adjusting for inflation, the United States has provided more than $300 billion in aid to Israel since statehood after World War II in 1948, making it the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.
Such assistance reflected Washington’s longstanding commitment to ensuring Israel’s technological and military superiority over any country or alliance in the Middle East.
Public support for Israel in the United States has declined since the outbreak of the Gaza war in 2023, however, particularly among Democrats.
On July 15, a proposal in the House of Representatives by Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky, known as the Massie Amendment, sought to prohibit allocation or use of any U.S. funds in an appropriations bill for Israel, but failed.
Aid to Israel is no longer the source of bipartisan consensus it has been for decades. Even supporters of the Make America Great Again movement have become more critical of Israel, accusing its leaders of misleading Trump and persuading him that an easy victory over Iran was possible. Netanyahu has previously denied those allegations, saying Trump makes his own decisions.
Several midterm candidates critical of Israel have won Democratic primary races in the U.S. and are now mounting strong challenges for congressional seats in the midterm elections Tuesday.
Cohen said U.S. aid to Israel was no longer a “red line” or the kind of given it had been just a few years ago. Trump’s announcement, he added, reflected a deeper shift among American voters, with Democrats and a growing number of Republicans questioning the value of the U.S.-Israel alliance.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
