Congress weighs Pentagon plan for U.S. military aid to Israel

House-passed bill needs Senate action before Dec. 11

President Trump told Fox News on the day of the U.S. midterm elections that he was cutting $4 billion in U.S. aid to Israel, which has for decades been one of the biggest recipients of U.S. military aid. The proposal taking shape would instead shift the financial relationship from the State Department to the Pentagon, and it would require congressional approval: the House passed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2027 in July, the Senate has not yet passed its version, and Congress must reconcile both before a government funding deadline on Dec. 11.

The House version of the defense bill includes Section 219, which says the U.S. defense secretary would designate an “executive agent” inside the Pentagon responsible for “synchronizing cooperative efforts” between the U.S. and Israeli militaries. The provision is also called Section 224 in some versions. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, which supports the new arrangement, says it includes “a $50 million increase” in U.S. funding for Israel compared to fiscal year 2026.

If approved, the new framework would make the U.S.-Israeli financial relationship part of Pentagon procurement, integrating parts of the Israeli and American defense industries and facilitating new joint projects. Joint future projects would include collaboration on missile defense, cybersecurity, biotechnology and drones. U.S. and Israeli officials have been negotiating the shift for months, and defense experts and former government officials say U.S. aid to Israel is not going away; it is just changing shape. Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group, based in Tel Aviv, said, “It doesn’t mean that the U.S. and Israel are going to stop working together. It doesn’t mean the U.S. is going to stop funding things.” Zonszein added, “It’s just going to be repackaged, reframed — and possibly not include the same kind of congressional oversight.”

Critics said that under the Pentagon, U.S. funding for Israel could face less scrutiny and less transparency at a time when U.S. voters are scrutinizing Israel more. Recent polls show American favorability of Israel has dropped to a record low, and Vice President JD Vance cited the U.S. relationship with Israel as one of the reasons Republicans lost the midterm elections. Annelle Sheline, a former State Department official who is now a research fellow at the Quincy Institute in Washington, D.C., said, “This would not only enable the Israel lobby to protect this money that the U.S. sends to Israel each year from the collapse in public support for U.S. funding for Israel, but it would also likely allow it to increase significantly.” Sheline, who quit the State Department in 2024 in protest against arms shipments to Israel at the height of the Gaza war, added, “Because now it would just be part of this massive and ballooning Pentagon budget.”

Amnesty International called the proposal a “troubling proposal” that risks expanding the U.S. government’s legal liability for potential violations of international law committed by Israel’s military. In September, dozens of civil rights and advocacy groups urged Congress to scrap the NDAA. Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has criticized arms sales to Israel, said the provision did more than put aid into law: “So it’s more than writing aid into law. It’s writing into law a position whose goal is to deepen and expand this relationship — a relationship that many Americans have expressed deep concerns about.”

Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu had been working on the change for months. Last May, on CBS’ 60 Minutes, Netanyahu said something similar to Trump’s Election Day comment: “I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation we have, because we receive $3.8 billion dollars a year.” He added, “I think it’s time we weaned ourselves.” That financial support was already due to expire in 2028, at the end of a ten-year Memorandum of Understanding signed by President Obama.

With criticism of Israel growing amid the wars in Iran and Gaza, Netanyahu may have wanted to pre-empt any difficulty renewing that aid package, said Avishay Ben-Sasson-Gordis, head of U.S.-Israel research at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “The prime minister believes it’s better that, instead of Israel being told it can’t get this degree of foreign military funding, it is giving it up of its own volition,” Ben-Sasson-Gordis said. Instead of losing U.S. military support, “the way Israel defines it, we’re going from aid to partnership,” Ben-Sasson-Gordis added.

NPR reported that many Israelis panicked when Trump made the announcement on the day of the U.S. midterm elections. Yair Wairauch, 36, a clinical psychologist in Jerusalem, said, “For us, the U.S. is one of our biggest friends. So when a president says something like that, it’s a slap in the face!” Local media said Trump’s “bombshell” announcement also caught the country’s defense and finance ministries by surprise. Meanwhile, U.S. voters and candidates who oppose U.S. military aid to Israel celebrated Trump’s move. Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, the senator-elect from Michigan, who accuses Israel of genocide and apartheid — charges that Israel denies — told NPR he thinks the president is “actually right on this policy.”

Last summer, Congress blocked a bipartisan effort by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to amend Section 219 of the NDAA. The Congress elected before the midterms, rather than newly elected members who include more critics of Israel, may ultimately decide the aid framework. The House has voted, the Senate has not, and the two versions must be reconciled before the Dec. 11 government funding deadline.