Trump says Israel will receive no more US military aid money after this year, catching Israeli ministries off guard
The president spoke of an arrangement with Netanyahu, but the current aid agreement runs until 2028 and it is unclear exactly who agreed to what.
Donald Trump said on Tuesday, election day, in a telephone interview with Fox News that the United States will stop its annual military aid of around 4 billion dollars to Israel by the end of 2026, The Times of Israel reports. He presented it as an arrangement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who according to Trump had raised the idea himself. Israel would still be able to buy US weapons, writes Reuters, which sees the remarks as an attempt to reach voters unhappy with support for Israel.
According to ABC News, Trump also gave political reasons: the aid was a bad argument for Republicans, and he referred to the Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. He did not say which forms of aid would end. The current ten-year memorandum, concluded at the end of the Obama administration, provides about 3.8 billion dollars a year and runs until the end of fiscal year 2028. Congress set the amounts in the defence law in 2021. According to The Times of Israel, the claim that the aid ends this year is therefore almost certainly incorrect.
The announcement caused surprise in Israel. Sources at the finance ministry said next year's budget had already been drawn up on the basis of the current agreement, and nothing was known at the defence ministry either, The Times of Israel reports. The office of Netanyahu, who has long wanted to phase out the aid over a period of about ten years, gave no comment. Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot said Netanyahu can no longer be trusted and must be replaced. In last week's Israeli election Netanyahu's bloc won 53 seats, short of the 61 needed for a majority, according to ABC News.