JERUSALEM (AP) — In the space of about 24 hours, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested cutting off aid to Israel, a staunch critic of Israel won a key Senate race and the vice president partly blamed his own party's landslide defeat on U.S.-Israel relations.
The rupture caused by Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza and the jointly launched war with Iran has shredded bipartisan U.S. support for Israel that goes back decades. Democrats are
fiercely divided over Israel, and Republicans are increasingly critical of its actions.
In Israel, critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuse him of having mismanaged relations with the country’s closest ally. But the divide runs much deeper, and is likely to persist even if a new government is formed after last week’s elections.
On the left, Americans increasingly see Israel as an international pariah because of the war in Gaza and violent settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. On the right, some see Israel as having undermined Trump’s “America First” pledge, accusing it of dragging the U.S. into a costly and unnecessary war with Iran.
“Something fundamental has shifted,” said Michael Oren, a historian and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. “My working assumption is that the call to cut off military aid is just the beginning.”
It is still unclear if Trump’s remarks on ending some $4 billion in annual military aid to Israel, made in an interview with Fox News, represent official policy or were just a last-ditch bid to sway voters on Election Day. The White House did not respond to a request for more details.
Netanyahu has repeatedly called Trump the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House. In his first term, Trump upended decades of U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and legitimizing Jewish settlements seen as illegal by most of the international community. In his second term, he joined Israel in two wars launched against Iran.
Hours after Trump's remarks, election results poured in, showing a massive wave of Democratic victories across the country, including in the crucial swing state of Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed handily defeated his Republican rival. El-Sayed accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza, allegations it vehemently denies.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance, seen as a possible front-runner to succeed Trump, has sought to distance himself from the Iran war and has adopted a more critical tone toward Israel.
In a postmortem posted on social media the morning after the election, Vance said an unnamed pollster, “one of the smartest people I know in politics,” told him Republicans need to do four things to bring voters back: “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. Vance’s call for change “does resonate with a certain part of the Republican Party, the Tucker Carlson and more right-wing, isolationist and MAGA part of the party,” he said.
For decades, the U.S. has provided billions of dollars in aid and advanced weaponry to Israel while shielding it from criticism at the U.N. and other international forums.
Supporters portray such aid as an investment in a powerful and reliable ally in a dangerous region. Critics like El-Sayed say it has underwritten Israel’s expansion of settlements, severely undermining prospects for a two-state solution with the Palestinians.
After Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, the Biden administration bypassed Congress to approve emergency weapons sales. It paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs at the height of the war in Gaza but continued to provide military aid. Trump has also approved billions of dollars in weapons sales to Israel. An academic study last year found that the U.S. had provided $21.7 billion in aid to Israel since the start of the war in Gaza.
Michael Singh, managing director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said a U.S. aid cutoff would “definitely leave the Israelis scrambling, and it would be a significant unilateral change in the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
Israel would have to finance its own purchases of American-made weapons, either by borrowing money or raising taxes, said Singh, who was the senior Middle East director on the National Security Council under former U.S. President George W. Bush.
Netanyahu has said he wants to wean Israel off U.S. military aid over the next 10 years. The goal would be to transition to a more balanced partnership, in which Israel would no longer rely on American taxpayer dollars while sharing its own considerable technological 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 interview with Fox. Netanyahu has not commented on Trump’s remarks.
Netanyahu lost his parliamentary majority in last week’s election, but it’s far from certain that his opponents will be able to replace him.
A new government led by Netanyahu’s main rival, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, could take some action to help blunt the criticism, like cracking down on rampant settler violence. But it would largely continue the policies toward the Palestinians and the wider region that have angered many Americans.
The disconnect was on vivid display earlier this week when Yair Lapid, a leading member of the anti-Netanyahu coalition, said on X that a new government should send representatives to the U.S. to engage with the White House, Congress and local leaders to repair 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 was missing the point.
“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 ultimately remains in office, “the downward spiral will increase and maybe even get worse.”
If Eisenkot prevails, “then he can begin a process which is going to be maybe even generational. It’s certainly 10 to 20 years to undo the damage that (Netanyahu) has caused,” Freilich said.
