Trump says US will end $4 billion in annual aid to Israel in 2027

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, Election Day for the midterms, that the United States will stop sending $4 billion a year in assistance to Israel starting in 2027 and will instead sell weapons to the country. Trump made the statement in a phone call to Fox News.

Trump said Netanyahu approached him with the idea and that the two have discussed it for a couple of years. "You can consider it a trade. You can consider it military aid or cash," Trump said. "We give them $4 billion in things and money, and they don't need it. And Bibi Netanyahu came to me, and we have been talking about it for a couple of years because it is a lot of money." Trump also said the aid had become a campaign issue for Democratic candidates, citing Abdul El-Sayed, a Senate candidate in Michigan.

Under a 2016 agreement signed by President Barack Obama, Israel was allocated $38 billion over 10 years, which averages $3.8 billion per year. Netanyahu told The Economist in January that he wanted to reduce US military aid gradually over the next 10 years and that the shift was underway. Trump spoke of ending the aid by late 2026, but the current agreement does not expire until 2028, and any change would depend on Congress.

David Schenker, who served as the top US diplomat for the Middle East during Trump's first term and now works at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the announcement would not shift voter sentiment. "It's an open question whether this was for politics, but it will not change Republican voters, and it certainly will not change Democratic voters," Schenker said.

Israeli opposition figures criticized the move. Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu's main rival and a former military chief, said in a statement that the Israeli defense establishment learning about the change through the media at the same time as the public showed "how dangerous Benjamin Netanyahu's conduct is." Yair Golan, a leader of the Israeli opposition bloc, said the end of aid would be a "severe blow to Israel's security" as the country fights on multiple fronts, and added that "the burden of financing defense needs at such a critical moment will fall entirely on the Israeli public."

Most US assistance to Israel comes as foreign military financing, which requires Israel to spend the money on American-made arms, so the funds flow back into the US economy. Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California on the House Armed Services Committee, has criticized a provision in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would expand US-Israel cooperation on new defense technology, saying such integration would take away US sovereignty. The bill has not yet been passed by Congress.

Trump said the left uses the $4 billion payment as a sign of injustice. "The left uses the $4 billion payment, which everyone knows, it's no secret, as a sign of injustice," Trump said on Tuesday on Fox News. "And we can't allow that. I don't like it because it's too easy. It's almost too easy of a target."