President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States will stop paying Israel about $4 billion a year at the end of this year. He said he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed months ago to end the payments because, in his words, Israel no longer needs the help.
Trump made the remarks in a phone interview on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” on the morning of Election Day, as Americans voted in the midterm elections.
“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. “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.”
“It gets cut off at the end of the year,” he added. “They don’t need it. Israel is a very thriving country.”
Host Brian Kilmeade pressed Trump on whether the $4 billion meant weapons or cash. “Any way you want to define it,” Trump replied. “You can consider it barter. You can consider it military aid or cash.”
Trump said Netanyahu raised the idea himself and that the two men had discussed it for a couple of years. He said Israel would still be able to buy American weapons. “They can buy whatever they want,” he said.
He also gave a political reason. Trump said the aid had become an easy talking point for Democrats, and he named Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, who has long criticized U.S. military aid to Israel and other countries.
What the current deal says
The United States now provides Israel $3.8 billion a year in military aid under a 10-year agreement signed in 2016. That agreement runs through fiscal year 2028, so Trump appears to be proposing to end it early.
The money is paid out of spending bills passed by Congress each year, so an early end to the deal would involve lawmakers. In May, the United States and Israel began formal talks on a new agreement to replace the current one, and it is not clear what framework, if any, came out of those talks.
The White House has not released any document or details about the agreement Trump described, and no formal step to end the aid has been announced.
Israel has not confirmed the deal
Netanyahu’s office has not commented on Trump’s remarks. CNN said it asked both Netanyahu’s office and the White House for more details.
Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s main political rival, reacted sharply. Eisenkot is trying to form a government after Israel’s Oct. 27 parliamentary elections left no party with a majority. “The special relationship with the U.S. is a central component of Israel’s national security,” he wrote on X. He said the fact that Israel’s defense establishment learned of the change “through the media” showed that Netanyahu “can no longer be trusted and must be replaced.”
Netanyahu has spoken before about ending American military aid one day, but never on this timeline. In January, he told The Economist he wanted to “taper off” U.S. military aid over the next 10 years and said such a change was “in the works.” Days before last week’s Israeli election, he told an Israeli news channel that voters should get used to the idea that the aid would not continue at past levels.
Israel is the largest single recipient of American aid, and the $3.8 billion a year is the backbone of the military relationship between the two countries. If the payments stop at the end of this year, it would be the biggest change in that relationship in decades.
Reporting based on Reuters, Associated Press, CNN and USA Today coverage of the president’s remarks.
