President Trump claimed on Tuesday that he will end the nearly $4 billion in military aid Israel receives from the US each year at the end of 2026, a statement that aligns with a plan backed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to further integrate the US and Israeli militaries.
“Now, as far as paying Israel, Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year, and we made a deal months ago that we’re stopping,” Trump said on Fox & Friends. “We’ve already agreed that by the end of this year we won’t be paying Israel. Now we’ll help Israel if they need it.”
Trump’s comments are seen as a last-minute election maneuver, and he mentioned that US military aid to Israel is being used as a talking point by Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in the Michigan Senate race. “Because they (Israel) don’t need it, and because why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it? It’s a bad, it’s a bad talking point,” he said.
Trump stressed that Israel could still buy weapons from the US and that he will “help Israel” if it needs. As things stand, even if the US cut off the $3.8 billion it provides Israel annually, the Israeli military would still be extremely reliant on US military support since it uses so much US-made military equipment, and the US provides significant intelligence support and political backing.
The US has also spent billions on defending Israel from missile attacks during the wars with Iran, and has reportedly deployed an additional Patriot missile defense system to Israel to prepare for the next potential escalation.
The purpose of the Netanyahu-backed plan to further merge the US and Israeli militaries is to remove public-facing military aid to reduce criticism of the US-Israel relationship and to make whatever aid and support Israel receives from the US under the new arrangement much less transparent. Netanyahu has previously described it as a shift in “the framework for US-Israel defense cooperation from aid to partnership,” though so far he hasn’t confirmed that he and Trump agreed to end the aid by 2027.
A provision to begin moving the plan forward has been included in the House version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, known as Section 219, which, according to a report from the Quincy Institute, seeks to “accelerate the US–Israel defense technology partnership, including technology sharing, coproduction of weapons systems, and bilateral research and development across multiple domains of warfare, including biotechnology, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, and more.”
Section 2019 would also “direct the secretary of defense to designate an executive agent, or EA, to expand integration of the US and Israeli defense industrial sectors.”
Ben Freeman of the Quincy Institute said on X in response to Trump’s statement that if the integration moves forward, Israel could “end up getting WAY more than $4B from US taxpayers” and that the funds would “just be buried in the DoD budget.”
