What Trump said
US President Donald Trump says Washington will stop providing roughly $4 billion in annual aid to Israel at the end of 2026. He said Israel could continue to buy American weapons and that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reached an agreement on the change months ago.
The announcement came during a telephone interview on 3 November, the day Americans voted in the midterm elections. Trump said Netanyahu had raised the idea and that Israel no longer needed the assistance. He also said the funding had become a political talking point used by Democrats against Republicans.
Trump did not set out which forms of assistance would end or how the change would be put into effect. He said the United States would still help Israel if it needed help, and drew a distinction between assistance and weapons that Israel could buy.
A spokesperson for Netanyahu said on 3 November that he did not know about the comment and would check for details. That response did not confirm the agreement Trump described. The president’s remarks set out his stated intention; they did not establish that the existing funding had already stopped.
On 3 November, Israeli opposition figure Gadi Eisenkot criticised Netanyahu’s handling of the relationship after the announcement and called on him to provide answers. The comments followed an Israeli election in which neither principal political bloc secured a parliamentary majority.
The existing agreement
The existing US-Israel security assistance framework was signed in 2016. It sets out a $38 billion US pledge over ten American fiscal years, from 2019 through 2028. Its scheduled end is in September 2028, later than the end-of-2026 date Trump gave.
The framework provides for $3.8 billion a year: $3.3 billion in foreign military financing and $500 million for missile defence. Trump described annual assistance as roughly $4 billion, but did not say precisely which forms of funding he meant or how each part of the existing arrangement would be treated.
Foreign military financing helps Israel obtain military equipment and services from US suppliers. Some of the other pledged money supports cooperative missile-defence programmes. These are different forms of support, rather than a single unrestricted annual cash payment.
The 2016 understanding also provides for a gradual end to a special arrangement that allowed Israel to spend some US military financing on equipment produced inside Israel. The phase-out was built into the existing agreement; it was not a new measure announced in Trump’s 3 November remarks.
The memorandum is a political commitment rather than a legally binding treaty. Congress has authorised military assistance in line with its terms, but the allocation of funds depends on congressional appropriations. Trump did not explain what steps would be taken in relation to the existing framework or future appropriations.
What remains unresolved
Netanyahu has previously spoken about reducing Israel’s reliance on US military assistance. In a May interview, he described an ambition to bring the financial component down to zero over the following decade. The end-of-year date given by Trump suggests a much faster change than that earlier timetable.
Before the 2016 agreement, a $30 billion military-aid understanding signed in 2007 covered the ten US fiscal years from 2009 to 2018. An earlier ten-year understanding included both economic and military aid and provided for a gradual phase-out of economic assistance.
Not all US-Israeli defence cooperation falls within the $38 billion framework. Congress appropriated $202 million for cooperative defence programmes outside the memorandum for the 2026 fiscal year. The interview did not make clear whether programmes outside the annual package would be affected.
The difference between aid and a sale matters because military financing can pay for purchases from American suppliers, while a sale could also be funded by Israel. Trump’s statement that sales could continue therefore does not, on its own, resolve how future purchases would be paid for.
For now, the outstanding questions include the scope of any reduction, the treatment of money already approved, and whether Congress or the two governments will take further formal steps. The interview did not establish the answers to those questions.
