Netanyahu's office has now contradicted President Trump's timetable in public. In a statement on Wednesday, the Prime Minister's Office insisted that American military aid to Israel will end gradually — not in the year-end cutoff Trump announced, and not on the "as soon as possible" schedule Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeated in Paris — and that the phase-out is an Israeli initiative agreed with Trump, not an American decision imposed on Israel. "In 1996, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel would gradually end US financial support. He did just that," the statement said. "Thirty years later, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel is strong enough economically to gradually end military support." The office recalled Netanyahu's words in a May interview with CBS's 60 Minutes — "I want to draw down to zero the American financial support" — and pointed to Rubio's own account this week that ending the aid was "something the Israelis themselves have offered us." It said the two countries are moving "from a model based on economic aid to one focused on collaboration," because "Israel has a strong and stable economy."
What the statement was answering is Trump's own framing. On Fox & Friends on the morning of the midterm elections, Trump said: "Now, as far as paying Israel, 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." Pressed to confirm, he added: "We were giving them $4 billion, we are, but it gets cut off at the end of the year," and "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." His argument, in his own words, is America-first leverage rather than abandonment: Israel remains, as he put it, "our number one" ally, it can keep buying American weapons, and the financing is what ends — "You can look at it as barter, and you can look at it as military aid or cash. They're fine with it. They don't need us." Rubio carried the same line in Paris: Trump "would like for the financing portion to end as soon as possible," because "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, Rubio answered "Absolutely" — if it wants to.
The agreement actually being negotiated looks much closer to Netanyahu's version than to a December cutoff. The current memorandum of understanding, signed in 2016, pays Israel $3.8 billion a year — $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing plus $500 million a year for missile-defense cooperation, $38 billion in all — and does not expire until the end of September 2028. According to Yedioth Ahronoth's reporting on the successor deal, the new memorandum would not stop the aid at once: the direct package would be roughly halved by shortening it to five years after 2028, with the $3.3 billion financing continuing across those five years and direct aid ending completely in 2033, while funding for joint air- and missile-defense development rises above today's $500 million a year and joint research and co-production expand — "We are moving here from a model of aid to a model of partnership," a senior Israeli official told Ynet. Negotiators for Rubio and for Israel's Defense Ministry and its Washington embassy aim to finalize the deal before the new Congress is seated in January. A hard stop this year was always difficult to square with the money already in motion: Euronews, citing a U.S. State Department document, reports Israel would need roughly another $10 billion after 2028 just to pay for American weapons it had already ordered as of April 1, 2026, and former State Department official Josh Paul has said ending the aid by the end of 2026 is not realistic given the funding Congress has already approved.
The contradiction landed in the middle of Israel's own government fight. Gadi Eisenkot — the former army chief who holds the mandate to form Israel's next government — accused Netanyahu of endangering the strategic relationship with the United States and demanded explanations for the planned changes to military cooperation, after writing on X that "the fact that the security establishment, along with Israeli citizens, is learning about a change in the strategic relationship framework through the media highlights just how much Benjamin Netanyahu's conduct poses a genuine danger. We can no longer rely on him and must replace him." Defense analysts are split along the same line: Jacob Nagel, a former Netanyahu national security adviser, warned a cutoff would have a "big impact" on Jerusalem, and analyst Yaakov Katz called ending the aid early "deeply concerning." In Washington, where the new Congress will have its own say over every dollar, supporters of Israel have urged Trump to phase the funding out gradually, while Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna said on X that "Zero aid Israel" would be part of his party's agenda if it wins congressional control.
For American taxpayers, the difference between the two timetables is real money and real leverage. The roughly $3.8 billion a year is spent overwhelmingly on American-made weapons, so the factory orders — and the missile-defense cooperation behind Iron Dome, David's Sling and Arrow, systems built against enemies America shares — continue under either plan; what changes is who pays. Trump's position is that a prosperous Israel should pay for itself, with American help still promised if Israel truly needs it. The gradual memorandum Netanyahu's office describes keeps the financing flowing five more years past 2028, then ends it for good in 2033 — and the fight now on the record between Washington and Jerusalem is over which of those two clocks the new agreement will actually run on.
— Previously posted on November 11, 2026 —
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.
— Previously posted on Friday, November 6, 2026 —
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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