U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday, November 3, that the United States would end its annual security assistance to Israel, saying the decision had been agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The aid was due to run through 2028 and is worth about $3.8 billion a year.
In a phone interview with Fox News, Trump said the two governments had reached an agreement months earlier to stop the payments. He described Israel as prosperous and said it did not need the assistance, while adding that the United States would help if the country needed it. Trump also referred to Netanyahu as being in agreement with the decision.
The assistance began in 2019 under a ten-year arrangement signed three years earlier by then-President Barack Obama. Under its terms, Israel received funding for arms purchases amounting to about $3.8 billion annually.
Netanyahu has previously said he wants Israel to end its dependence on U.S. financial support. In May, he said he intended to bring that assistance down to zero.
During the Fox News interview, Trump also cited comments by Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan and a critic of Israel. The war in Gaza, launched by Israel in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, has become a source of deep division in the United States.
Sources: Le Monde International.