Voters were still queuing at polling stations across the United States when Donald Trump picked up the phone to Fox & Friends on Tuesday and announced the end of an arrangement that has survived every administration for decades. Washington, he said, will no longer hand Israel roughly $4 billion a year once 2026 is over. Arms sales would continue, and the president promised that America would still step in should its ally need help.
Trump presented the move as Benjamin Netanyahu’s own idea. “He brought it up,” he said, describing a deal struck “months ago” and arguing that Israel has become wealthy enough to manage without the cash. His Israeli counterpart’s office stayed silent when asked. The Israeli leader has in the past spoken of tapering American support to zero, though over roughly a decade rather than a few weeks.
What exactly would end is far from clear. The memorandum of understanding signed in 2016 commits $3.8 billion annually, split into $3.3 billion of military financing and $500 million for joint missile defence, and runs until 2028. Congress has already appropriated money through September 2027, and only lawmakers can rewrite those budgets. Weapons orders that are already in the pipeline add another layer of uncertainty.
The president did not hide the domestic calculation. Critics on the left, he complained, treat the payment as an easy target, and he singled out Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. Polling shows sympathy for Israel slipping among Democratic voters since the Gaza war began in 2023. Oil traders read the remarks as a hint of de-escalation with Iran, sending Brent crude down about 3% before it partly recovered.
Across the Mediterranean, the opposition wasted no time. Former army chief Gadi Eisenkot said it was alarming that the defence establishment learned of a strategic shift from the media, while Democrats leader Yair Golan warned that losing the money would hurt the country’s security.
