Middle East Insider · Issue 074 · Wednesday, November 4, 2026

Thirty-One Years to Zero

Good morning. President Trump said on Tuesday that American military aid to Israel ends in December, and by morning the Democrats had won both houses of Congress. The Forum printed the case for ending American aid in 1995, and I wrote in May that the only open question was whether the end would be built or improvised. Then the results and Herzog’s consultations.

President Trump says the aid stops in December. The Forum first printed the case for ending it 31 years ago, and the warning it published in May was about this: an end without a framework built to replace it.

On Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning President Trump said: “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.” Then: “By the end of this year we won’t be paying Israel,” and “We’ll help Israel if they need it.” He said Netanyahu “brought it up.” The 2016 memorandum runs through September 2028 at $3.3 billion a year in Foreign Military Financing plus $500 million for missile defense, and Congress appropriates every dollar of it. The Associated Press wrote that “such an abrupt shift would be all but impossible,” and Politico that lawmakers “will likely need to weigh in.” By 3 a.m. the Associated Press had called both chambers of Congress for the Democrats.

An official of Israel’s Finance Ministry told the Walla news site that “the ministry was aware of the intention to end it, but was surprised by the intention to do so immediately.” The Jerusalem Post put the two remaining years at about $8 billion in F-35s, F-15s, helicopters and interceptors. Gadi Eisenkot leads the bloc against Netanyahu and said of him, “He can no longer be trusted and must be replaced.” Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition called the end “not unexpected” and “openly discussed in partnership and coordination between the governments.” The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to JTA’s request for comment.

I wrote this in May, three times. In JNS on May 1: “The era of grant aid to Israel is closing,” and “not because the alliance is faltering, but because Israel has succeeded.” In the Forum’s May 12 press release on its report From Subsidy to Sovereignty: “The question is no longer whether to phase out, but how.” In RealClear World on May 21: “The only open question is whether the transition is built or improvised,” and “None of this requires a $3.3 billion check. All of it requires a framework that does not yet exist.” The JNS piece forecast talks opening in May and a framework likely signed by fiscal 2027. The talks began, nothing has been signed, and on Tuesday the President set a date.

The Forum’s argument is older than mine. The Middle East Quarterly was in its second year in the fall of 1995 when it asked “End American Aid to Israel?” and printed both answers: Joel Bainerman’s yes, “aid is welfare and welfare demeans, for states as well as for individuals,” beside the no of Raphael Danziger and Bradley Gordon of AIPAC. In July 1996 Netanyahu told a joint meeting of Congress that “Israel has reached childhood’s end” and that his government would “begin the long-term process of gradually reducing the level of your generous economic assistance.” Mitchell Bard and Daniel Pipes wrote in the Quarterly in 1997 that Israel “has become an affluent country” and that the peace-process tie “makes U.S. aid to Israel unlike any other.” In January 1998 Finance Minister Yaakov Ne’eman carried Israel’s offer to Capitol Hill: cut the $1.2 billion in economic aid by $120 million a year over a decade and raise the military grant by half that amount. The appropriations bills for fiscal 1999, 2000 and 2001 did that.

Military aid went the other way. The 2007 memorandum set $30 billion over ten years. The 2016 memorandum set $38 billion, with a concession written in: the provision letting Israel spend about a quarter of the money at home phases to zero in fiscal 2028. Pipes wrote in Israel Hayom that summer that Netanyahu’s 1996 goal “was correct” and that “the U.S. government will have a better ally by intelligently closing down the aid relationship.” On December 24 of last year Netanyahu announced 350 billion shekels over a decade “to build an independent Israeli munitions industry.” On 60 Minutes in May: “I want to draw down to zero the American financial support,” and “I don’t want to wait for the next Congress.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told House appropriators on June 2 that the Israelis want “slowly less every year, until the number hits zero.”

The House has voted once on ending it. On July 15 it rejected an amendment by Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie to strike the $3.3 billion, 104 to 314, with 103 Democrats in favor and no other member of his party. Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the House Democrats, announced a no vote the day before and wrote to his caucus that Israel “is capable of paying for its own sophisticated weapons.” On October 7 I wrote that “the danger is drift,” that a program Israel’s own prime minister wants to end “will not last to 2028 on habit.” Netanyahu said on Channel 10 on October 23 that the aid “won’t keep coming because America has changed, not because Israel has.” Globes reported on October 25 that the two governments had agreed on a major cut, not elimination, and that the obstacle was American demands for control of Israeli technology. On Tuesday Calcalist wrote that the defense establishment has not settled how to close out 2026, with “a shortfall of tens of billions of shekels.”

I draw three conclusions. First, the prediction came true sooner than I expected, and in the form the Forum warned against. An end announced on television before a successor agreement is signed is the improvised transition. The steps I set out in May are more urgent now: a framework signed by the end of fiscal 2027, a glide path to 2038, missile-defense money doubled to $1 billion, export-control relief, and Israeli institutions to carry the change.

Second, Congress holds the money, and from January it is Democratic in both chambers. The House’s fiscal 2027 bill carries the $3.3 billion, the Senate has not passed it, and 314 members voted in July against striking it, with 103 Democrats wanting it struck and Hakeem Jeffries writing that the next arrangement should be “structured consistently with defense agreements that exist with our other Western allies.” Until the administration says whether December means no request, no obligation or the terms of the next memorandum, Israel’s budget planners have the President’s words and, as the ministry official told Walla, no formal document.

Third, the case the Forum printed in 1995 and has argued in its own voice since 2016 is to end the aid from strength and on purpose, as the two governments ended the economic grant over the decade after 1998. The President gave two reasons on Tuesday. The first, “they don’t need it,” is the Forum’s. The second was political: “The left uses the $4 billion payment that everybody knows about, when it’s no secret, as a signal of unfairness.” The Forum’s position has a second half as well, that the aid end under a signed agreement, and that part is still missing.

MEF Reports, From Subsidy to Sovereignty: Restructuring the U.S.-Israel Defense Relationship for the Post-Aid Era (May 5): The Forum’s paper on the successor framework, with nine findings.

MEF Online, The U.S.-Israel Aid Era Is Ending; Drift Is the Greatest Risk (May 24): My RealClear World piece on what must happen before the fiscal 2028 cliff.

Middle East Insider, The 87-Day Warning (Oct 7): The special edition on the alliance; its section on aid said the danger is drift.

MEF Reports, Out of Range, Poised to Strike: Mapping America’s Force Posture against Iran (Nov 2): Monday’s satellite study of the American force: two carriers, a full tanker ramp in Qatar, no bombers forward.

Michael Rubin briefs supporters in Philadelphia on Thursday about Israel’s next war and in Washington on Friday about Erdoğan’s Turkey.

The Associated Press called the Senate and then the House for the Democrats before dawn.

Democrats needed a net gain of four in the Senate and three in the House. By 3:30 a.m. Eastern, 10:30 a.m. in Israel, the Associated Press had called both chambers for them: at least seven Senate seats flipped, in Kansas, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Maine and the two Carolinas, with Georgia and Michigan held. In the House they flipped more than two dozen districts, with new Democratic seats in Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and Utah. In Michigan Abdul El-Sayed, whom the President cited on Fox, beat Mike Rogers and will be the first Muslim senator. Later calls: the AP’s live page.

Herzog begins coalition consultations today; the President called Monday night’s strike on Iran a “minor attack.”

President Isaac Herzog receives the official results at noon today from the Central Elections Committee and begins consultations at 5 p.m., smallest parties first, the larger ones on Thursday. Ynet puts the expected recommendations at 48 for Eisenkot and 46 for Netanyahu, with three parties undeclared. On Iran, the President said on Fox that the United States hit a new anti-aircraft facility overnight, the Qeshm Island strike reported on Monday: “It was just a minor attack. It wasn’t war.”

House members who voted on July 15 against an amendment to strike the $3.3 billion for Israel from the fiscal 2027 bill; 104 were in favor. The President said on Tuesday that the payments end in December. The bill is in the Senate.

Corrections Desk. Nothing to correct from Monday’s edition; errors in this one go to [email protected].

If the 1995 symposium was news to you, forward this to someone who thinks the debate began this year.

Reply with the one thing the successor framework must contain before the money stops.