As Israel is trying to choose the next prime minister — a new Knesset sworn in on Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu demanding a national unity government and his opponents already naming their own speaker — Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters at the G7 in Paris that President Donald Trump wants American military aid to Israel ended "as soon as possible," because Israel no longer needs Washington to pay its weapons bill.
"We're working through that in terms of how we negotiate the memorandum of understanding," Rubio said. "But the president's expectation is that Israel is now prosperous and rich enough to be able to be a sales country. They can buy the weapons from us, but we no longer have to provide the financing." Asked whether Israel could come off aid by the end of the year, he answered: "Absolutely" — if it wants to. "The president wants it as soon as possible. He thinks it makes sense to do it as soon as possible."
The speed is Trump's, not Israel's. Netanyahu said earlier this year that he wants to move Israel off U.S. aid over the course of a decade; Trump said last week there is an agreement for the aid to cease by the end of this year — a statement that took top officials on both sides by surprise, and that landed on President Isaac Herzog, as the report below records, like a bolt from the blue. The current memorandum of understanding runs through 2028. Rubio said the new one is already being negotiated, and that because Israel also produces weaponry, part of it "would also involve the ability to co-produce on some things" — "we'll negotiate the timeline."
For American taxpayers the change is simple to state: the weapons keep flowing — American factories keep the orders and the jobs — but the financing stops being a gift from the U.S. Treasury and becomes a purchase Israel pays for itself. That is the deal Rubio is now selling in public, at the very moment Israel's next government, whoever leads it, is being decided.
Israel's President Isaac Herzog has said President Donald Trump's announcement that the United States will end its military aid to Israel came upon him “like a bolt from the blue” — he had not been told it was coming, and the agreement that carries the aid is supposed to remain in force through 2028.
Herzog made the remarks on Thursday during consultations at the President's Residence in Jerusalem with a delegation from Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party, as he meets the parties following Israel's election. “It worries me greatly, and it came upon us like a bolt from the blue,” he said, according to the President's Office. “We have an MOU with the United States that should remain in force through 2028.” He stressed that Israel needs to form a government rather than head into another election, with the entire issue of the United States in front of it.
The announcement Herzog was answering came on Tuesday — Election Day in the United States — when Trump said on Fox & Friends that roughly $4 billion a year in U.S. military aid to Israel would stop by the end of 2026. “Because they don't need it,” Trump said. He said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed the decision months earlier, and that Israel would still be able to buy American weapons.
The money flows under a 10-year memorandum of understanding signed in 2016, worth $38 billion across the 2019 to 2028 fiscal years — about $3.8 billion a year, spent largely on American-made weapons. Trump's timetable would end the payments two years before that deal expires.
In Israel, the announcement landed without details. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on Thursday that he was seeking clarification on whether the funding would end right away or only after the existing agreement expires in 2028, and Israeli defense and diplomatic officials were reported to still be lacking details.
Netanyahu has not commented publicly on Trump's announcement. He has argued before — as recently as January — that Israel should gradually reduce its reliance on American aid and build up its own arms industry, and Trump said the suggestion to end the aid began with Netanyahu himself. No formal decision has been published by the U.S. government: so far, the end of the aid rests on Trump's statement.
For American taxpayers, the question is concrete: close to $4 billion a year of their money goes to Israel under the deal. Trump's argument is that a wealthy and militarily advanced Israel can stand on its own feet — and would keep buying American weapons with its own money, so the orders for U.S. factories continue while the grant money stays home.
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