Follow-Up: Netanyahu's Office Responds to U.S. Aid Cutoff, Framing It as a Shift From Aid to Partnership
Jerusalem — Israel's Prime Minister's Office issued a statement on November 6 making its first response to President Trump's announcement three days earlier that the United States would stop military aid to Israel at the end of this year. The statement did not dispute Trump's claim and offered no timeline of its own, instead framing the change as a shift in the two countries' relationship "from aid to partnership."
"U.S. military aid to Israel has always been a cross-the-aisle agreement," the Prime Minister's Office said, noting that Israel had used the assistance to defend itself and to confront enemies threatening America and the West. "Today, Israel has a strong and stable economy. The move by PM Netanyahu and President Trump from aid to partnership shows the strength and sophistication of our relationship, and its ability to adapt and stand strong over time." The statement was published in English on the Prime Minister's Office social media account, alongside a clip of an interview its spokesman, Doron Spielman, gave to Fox News.
In that interview, Spielman said that "while the aid has been incredibly important, the prime minister has been working with President Trump to make the correct transition out from aid towards partnership and mutual investment." It was the Prime Minister's Office's first public comment since Trump announced the cutoff in a phone interview with Fox News' Fox & Friends on November 3; GSM's November 3 report noted at the time that the office had not responded to a request for comment.
Israeli diplomatic officials, however, described a less settled picture to local media. According to Ynet, the officials said "no final decision has been made" and that Israel aims to complete a successor agreement before the current U.S. Congress ends its term on January 3, 2027 — one that would set a gradual reduction in aid and shift funding toward joint projects and joint research and development.
The background: Trump said on November 3 that the United States currently provides Israel with about $4 billion a year, that he and Netanyahu had agreed "months ago" to stop the payments at the end of this year, and that the idea had been Netanyahu's. The current U.S.-Israel memorandum of understanding provides $3.8 billion a year and runs through September 2028, and the phase-out Netanyahu himself had publicly discussed earlier this year would taper the aid to zero over ten years. How the gap between an end-of-year cutoff and a decade-long taper is bridged will depend on the successor-agreement talks. (Source: The Times of Israel)
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Source: The Times of Israel
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：特朗普与内塔尼亚胡2026年7月28日在白宫椭圆形办公室会晤（资料图）。照片：白宫，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: President Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office on July 28, 2026 (file photo). Photo by the White House, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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