JERUSALEM — On the day of the U.S. midterm elections, when President Trump told Fox News he is cutting $4 billion in U.S. aid to Israel, many Israelis panicked. Israel has been one of the biggest recipients of U.S. military aid for decades.
"For us, the U.S. is one of our biggest friends. So when a president says something like that, it's a slap in the face!" says Yair Wairauch, 36, a clinical psychologist in Jerusalem. Local media say Trump's "bombshell" announcement also caught the country's defense and finance ministries by surprise.
Meanwhile, U.S. voters and candidates who oppose U.S. military aid to Israel celebrated Trump's move. Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, the senator-elect from Michigan — who accuses Israel of genocide and apartheid, charges Israel denies — told NPR he thinks the president is "actually right on this policy."
But defense experts and former government officials say U.S. aid to Israel is not going away. It's just changing shape.
Trump and Netanyahu have been working on this for months
Last May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said something similar to Trump's Election Day comment on CBS' 60 Minutes.
"I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation we have, because we receive $3.8 billion dollars a year," Netanyahu said. "I think it's time we weaned ourselves."
This aid was already due to expire in 2028, at the end of a ten-year Memorandum of Understanding signed by President Obama.
With criticism of Israel growing, amid the wars in Iran and Gaza, Netanyahu may have wanted to pre-empt any difficulty renewing that aid package, says Avishay Ben-Sasson-Gordis, head of U.S.-Israel research at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
"The prime minister believes it's better that, instead of Israel being told it can't get this degree of foreign military funding, it is giving it up of its own volition," he says.
Instead of losing U.S. military support, "the way Israel defines it, we're going from aid to partnership," Ben-Sasson-Gordis adds.
Switching U.S. aid to Israel from the State Department to the Pentagon
For months, U.S. and Israeli officials have been negotiating a plan to shift U.S. aid to Israel from the State Department to the Pentagon. It would integrate parts of the Israeli and American defense industries, and facilitate new joint projects.
"It doesn't mean that the U.S. and Israel are going to stop working together. It doesn't mean the U.S. is going to stop funding things," says Mairav Zonszein, senior Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group, based in Tel Aviv . "It's just going to be repackaged, reframed — and possibly not include the same kind of congressional oversight."
If approved, the new framework — outlined in the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, for fiscal year 2027 — would make the U.S.-Israeli financial relationship part of Pentagon procurement. Joint future projects would include collaboration on missile defense, cybersecurity, biotechnology and drones.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, which supports the new arrangement, says it includes "a $50 million increase" in U.S. funding for Israel compared to fiscal year 2026.
But Amnesty International calls it a "troubling proposal" that risks expanding the U.S. government's legal liability for potential violations of international law committed by Israel's military. In September, dozens of civil rights and advocacy groups urged Congress to scrap the NDAA.
Critics cite less scrutiny, transparency
Under the Pentagon, U.S. funding for Israel could face less scrutiny and less transparency, at a time when U.S. voters are scrutinizing Israel more, critics say. Recent polls show American favorability of Israel has dropped to a record low. Vice President JD Vance cited the U.S. relationship with Israel as one of the reasons Republicans lost the midterm elections.
"This would not only enable the Israel lobby to protect this money that the U.S. sends to Israel each year from the collapse in public support for U.S. funding for Israel, but it would also likely allow it to increase significantly," says Annelle Sheline, a former State Department official who is now a research fellow at the Quincy Institute in Washington D.C.
"Because now it would just be part of this massive and ballooning Pentagon budget," says Sheline, who quit the State Department in 2024 in protest against arms shipments to Israel at the height of the Gaza war.
In the House version of the NDAA bill, Section 219 says the U.S. defense secretary would designate an "executive agent" inside the Pentagon, responsible for "synchronizing cooperative efforts" between the U.S. and Israeli militaries.
"So it's more than writing aid into law. It's writing into law a position whose goal is to deepen and expand this relationship — a relationship that many Americans have expressed deep concerns about," says Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has criticized arms sales to Israel.
Last summer, Congress blocked a bipartisan effort by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to amend Section 219 of the NDAA, which is also called Section 224 in some versions.
In July, the House passed the NDAA, but the Senate has not yet passed its version. Congress needs to pass and reconcile both before a government funding deadline on Dec. 11.
So it will be the outgoing lame duck Congress — rather than newly-elected members, who include more critics of Israel — who may ultimately decide this.
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