The existing agreement provides Israel with around $3.8billion a year in military support, but Trump said the payments will stop after 2026 despite the unprecedented deal running until 2028
The United States is set to stop providing around $4billion (£2.98billion) a year in aid to Israel as the country shifts towards buying more of its own military equipment.
Donald Trump confirmed the agreement between himself and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying the pair had been discussing the issue for years before reaching a deal months ago. The US President said: “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.”
Trump claimed Israel no longer needs the aid and said the amount was a significant sum for the US to spend. He said: “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.”
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The US has provided tens of billions of dollars in military assistance to Israel over the years. American support began in 1949 with a $100million (£74.5m) loan from the US Export-Import Bank, before expanding significantly in the decades that followed. The current agreement was signed under then-President Barack Obama in 2016, committing the US to provide $38billion (£28.3bn) in military aid between 2019 and 2028. It includes $33billion (£24.6bn) in Foreign Military Financing grants and $5billion (£3.7bn) for missile defence programmes.
Under the deal, Israel’s ability to spend part of the funding on its own defence industry was gradually being phased out, with an increasing share required to be spent on American-made military equipment. Trump has now said the annual payments will stop at the end of 2026, although it remains unclear how the existing agreement, which runs until 2028, will be brought to an early end. Congress must also approve annual funding.
The US President told Fox News: “You can consider it barter. You can consider military aid or cash. Look, we give them $4 billion of things and money, and they don’t need it. And I was approached by Bibi Netanyahu, and we’ve been talking about it for a couple of years because it’s a lot of money.”
The announcement came as Americans vote in the midterm elections and amid growing political criticism of US support for Israel from both Democrats and some Republicans. Trump specifically referenced Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who opposes unconditional military aid to Israel.
In a May interview with CBS, the BBC ’s US partner, Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wants to “draw down” US financial support to Israel “to zero” from the annual $3.8bn the country receives. Netanyahu said: “Let’s start now and do it over the next decade, over the next ten years, but I want to start now. I don’t want to wait for the next Congress. I want to start now.”
However, Yair Golan, a leader in Israel’s opposition bloc, said an end to US military aid would deal a “severe blow to Israel’s security”. Golan, a former deputy military chief, said in a statement: “The burden of funding defence needs at such a critical juncture will fall entirely upon the Israeli public.”
An academic study published last year found the US provided at least $21.7billion (£16.18bn) in military assistance to Israel under the Biden and Trump administrations after the start of the Gaza war in 2023. In September 2025, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, finding that four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law had been carried out.
They included killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction and imposing measures intended to prevent births.