JERUSALEM – Over roughly 24 hours, President Donald Trump floated the possibility of ending U.S. aid to Israel, a prominent critic of Israel captured a pivotal Senate seat and Vice President JD Vance partly attributed his party’s sweeping defeat to voter frustration over U.S.-Israel relations.
The fallout from Israel’s devastating Gaza offensive and the joint war with Iran has badly eroded the bipartisan American support Israel relied on for decades. Democrats are deeply split over the country, while growing numbers of Republicans are also voicing criticism of its conduct.
In Israel, opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuse him of mishandling ties with the country’s most important ally. Yet the strain extends well beyond Netanyahu and is unlikely to disappear even if last week’s election produces a new government.
On the American left, Israel is increasingly viewed as an international pariah because of the Gaza war and the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank. On the right, critics argue that Israel has undercut Trump’s “America First” agenda by pulling the United States into an expensive and unnecessary conflict with Iran.
“Something fundamental has shifted,” said Michael Oren, a historian and former Israeli ambassador to the United States. “My working assumption is that the call to cut off military aid is just the beginning.”
The political landscape shifts on the left and right
It remains uncertain whether Trump’s comments about ending roughly $4 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, made in an interview with Fox News, reflect established policy or were a last-minute attempt to influence voters on Election Day. The White House did not respond to a request for clarification.
Netanyahu has repeatedly described Trump as Israel’s best friend ever to occupy the White House. During his first term, Trump broke with decades of U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and legitimizing Jewish settlements that most of the international community considers illegal. In his second term, he joined Israel in two wars against Iran.
Hours after Trump’s comments, election results showed Democrats scoring major victories nationwide, including in the critical swing state of Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed decisively defeated his Republican opponent. El-Sayed has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, a charge Israel strongly rejects.
Vance, who is viewed as a potential successor to Trump, has tried to distance himself from the Iran conflict while taking a more skeptical stance toward Israel.
In a social media post published the morning after the election, Vance said an unnamed pollster, whom he called “one of the smartest people I know in politics,” had identified four steps Republicans needed to take to win back voters: “1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel.”
“This clearly doesn’t bode well,” said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel. He said Vance’s proposed shift would appeal to a segment of the Republican Party aligned with Tucker Carlson and broader right-wing, isolationist and MAGA politics.
Cutting off aid would be a ‘significant unilateral change’
For decades, Washington has supplied Israel with billions of dollars and sophisticated weapons while protecting it from criticism at the United Nations and other international bodies.
Supporters describe the assistance as an investment in a capable, dependable ally in a volatile region. Critics, including El-Sayed, argue that it has helped finance Israel’s settlement expansion and made a negotiated two-state agreement with the Palestinians increasingly difficult to achieve.
Following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, the Biden administration bypassed Congress to authorize emergency arms sales. Although it halted one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs at the height of the Gaza war, military support continued. Trump has likewise approved billions of dollars in weapons sales to Israel. An academic study published last year estimated that the United States had provided Israel with $21.7 billion in aid since the war began.
Michael Singh, managing director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said an American aid cutoff would “definitely leave the Israelis scrambling” and amount to “a significant unilateral change in the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
Israel would then need to pay for its American-made weapons itself, either by taking on additional debt or raising taxes, said Singh, who served as the National Security Council’s senior Middle East director under former President George W. Bush.
Netanyahu has said he hopes to end Israel’s dependence on U.S. military aid within a decade. His stated aim is a more balanced partnership in which Israel no longer relies on American taxpayers while contributing its own advanced technology and intelligence capabilities.
“The prime minister has been working with President Trump to make the correct transition out from aid towards partnership and mutual investment,” Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for Netanyahu, said in a recent Fox interview. Netanyahu has not publicly addressed Trump’s comments.
A new Israeli government would face the same pressure
Netanyahu lost his parliamentary majority in last week’s election, but his opponents are far from certain to have the numbers needed to remove him from power.
A government headed by Netanyahu’s chief rival, former military commander Gadi Eisenkot, could take steps to ease American criticism, including a crackdown on widespread settler violence. Still, it would probably retain many of the policies toward the Palestinians and the broader region that have alienated large numbers of Americans.
The gap was starkly illustrated earlier this week when Yair Lapid, a leading figure in the anti-Netanyahu coalition, wrote on X that a new government should dispatch representatives to Washington to meet with the White House, Congress and local officials and rebuild strained relations.
Brad Lander, a newly elected Democratic representative from New York who was briefly detained by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank last month, said Lapid had misunderstood the nature of the problem.
“As someone who won a seat in Congress last night, and who cares about Israel: you’re not listening to what American voters — Jewish and non-Jewish — are saying. We aren’t starving for a barnstorming tour. We’re hungry to see respect for international law and human rights,” Lander wrote.
Freilich, the former Israeli security official, said that if Netanyahu stays in office, “the downward spiral will increase and maybe even get worse.”
If Eisenkot takes power, Freilich said, he could begin a process that may take a generation. “It’s certainly 10 to 20 years to undo the damage that (Netanyahu) has caused,” he said.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.