US President Donald Trump said financial assistance to Israel would end at the close of 2026. Trump said he had reached an agreement on the matter with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Speaking by phone on Fox News, Trump said he and Netanyahu had agreed that the $4 billion in US financing for Israel would end at the end of this year. He argued that Israel no longer needed the funding and said some Democrats and left-leaning politicians were using US financial support for Israel as a means of criticizing Republicans.
“Bibi Netanyahu and I made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year, and months ago we agreed with him that as of the end of the year, we would no longer pay it.”
Trump said the United States would assist Israel if it needed help and added that Washington was ready to sell weapons to the country. He said Israel, like Europe, could buy whatever it wanted and that the United States makes the best weapons in the world.
It was not clear precisely which funding Trump said would be terminated. A memorandum of understanding signed by the two sides, providing for $3.8 billion in annual US military assistance to Israel, expires in 2028. The two countries have been holding talks for some time on how Washington’s support for Israel will be structured after that date.
Netanyahu, who lost his parliamentary majority in elections in Israel last week, said in a May interview with CBS that he hoped Israel would end its dependence on US military assistance within a decade. In a June letter to a member of the US Congress, Netanyahu said it was time for Israel to “move from being a recipient of assistance to being a partner.”
Support for Israel has declined in US public opinion, particularly among Democrats, since the Gaza war began in 2023. A June survey by Quinnipiac University found that 48 percent of American voters believe the United States gives Israel more support than it should; the figure was 66 percent among Democrats. In 2017, 16 percent held that view.
An academic study published last year found that Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Trump approved at least $21.7 billion in military aid for Israel after the war that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
