Trump says deal with Netanyahu ends $4B Israel aid by end of 2026

By The Conservative Desk (/journals/conservative-desk)

As President Donald Trump spoke to Fox & Friends on the morning of November 3, 2026, Brent crude slid more than 3 percent to around $101 a barrel, its lowest level in more than three weeks. It was Election Day for the midterms. Trump had just said the United States would stop sending Israel about $4 billion a year.

“They don’t need it,” he said.

The call was live in the middle of a voting day. Trump told the hosts that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had settled the matter months earlier, and that the Israeli leader had raised the idea himself.

“He brought it up. He brought it up,” Trump said. “He said, ‘I think it would be appropriate if we do not receive aid,’ because he understands that this is one of their points of contention.”

He put the annual figure at roughly $4 billion and said the arrangement would end by the close of 2026. “Now, as far as paying Israel, Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4bn a year, and we made a deal months ago that we’re stopping,” he 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.”

The existing memorandum of understanding, signed in 2016, provides roughly $3.8 billion a year through fiscal year 2028. Trump did not say whether a 2026 cutoff terminates that pact early. The Associated Press version of the same remarks placed the stop in 2027.

What did not end, he made plain, was the commercial channel. Asked whether arms sales were finished too, he answered, “Oh yes, they can buy whatever they want.” In the same interview he pointed to new Patriot and Tomahawk missile factories as part of the industrial base. The distinction is straightforward: grant aid stops; cash sales of American weapons continue.

That is the free-enterprise half of the decision. The taxpayer half is the dollar amount itself. A Quincy Institute paper by William D. Hartung calculated that the United States sent $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel in the two years after the October 7, 2023 attack. A congressional report put the cumulative historical total at $174 billion, not adjusted for inflation. Trump’s stated reason for ending the annual flow was that the recipient no longer requires it. “We give them more than anybody else, and they no longer need it. We’ve been doing it for years. I’ve been doing it, but Israel is a very thriving country. They don’t need it. If they did need it, I would say keep it going.”

Netanyahu had already sketched the same destination in public. In a May interview with CBS he said he wants to “draw down” U.S. financial support “to zero” from the annual $3.8 billion and to “start now” rather than wait for another Congress. Trump’s Election Day account simply accelerated the timeline the Israeli prime minister had already endorsed.

The political incentive was stated without disguise. Trump called the $4 billion “the best talking point that these lunatics on the left have” and named Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who has made Israel aid a campaign issue. “Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like El-Sayed?” he asked. “You take that off the table.”

The numbers behind that talking point have shifted. A September Quinnipiac poll found 48 percent of voters believe the United States is too supportive of Israel, up from 16 percent in 2017. Among Democrats the share was 67 percent; among Republicans it was 17 percent. In July, Rep. Thomas Massie forced a House vote on a bill to cut $3.3 billion in security aid. One hundred three Democrats backed the cut. Massie was the only Republican. The measure failed 314-104. The record therefore shows a growing Democratic appetite to reduce the aid and a Republican president now removing the line item on terms the Israeli prime minister himself proposed.

Yair Golan, head of Israel’s left-wing Democrats party, issued criticism after the news broke. “The cessation of American aid deals a severe blow to Israel’s security and the quality of life in the country,” Golan said. He added that defense expenditures have reached massive proportions, stocks of offensive weaponry need replenishing, and air-defense capabilities have been eroded after prolonged war, and he called the outcome “yet another colossal failure” by Netanyahu. That is the objection the record actually carries: an Israeli opposition figure arguing the cutoff weakens Israel at a moment of high military demand. Trump’s reply, already on tape, is that Israel is thriving, that Netanyahu initiated the conversation, and that purchases of American systems remain open. No Democratic member of Congress is quoted in the available record defending continuation of the grant aid against this particular announcement; El-Sayed’s campaign pressure runs in the opposite direction.

Fox News headlined the story around the dual track Trump described: Israel will stop receiving the $4 billion by year’s end and can still buy weapons. The BBC reported that it had contacted the White House for clarification on which exact accounts were covered and that the Israeli prime minister’s office had yet to comment; a Netanyahu spokesman told one outlet he did not know the details of the remarks and would check. Oil traders, meanwhile, treated the comments as one more data point in a wider de-escalation narrative that had already knocked prices lower the day before.

Here the subsidy’s own chief beneficiary proposed ending it, the American president accepted, and the commercial relationship was left intact. The $4 billion figure, whether rounded from the $3.8 billion memorandum or inclusive of other accounts, is real money that will no longer leave the Treasury on the old schedule. The factories Trump mentioned are real production lines that will sell rather than give away the next round of interceptors and cruise missiles.

What remains unsettled is the calendar. Trump said “by the end of this year.” The Associated Press wrote “in 2027.” The 2016 memorandum still runs through fiscal 2028. Trump never clarified whether the new deal truncates that agreement, Until that paperwork appears, the precise date the last grant dollar moves is the open fact the markets, the Congress, and the two governments still have to resolve.