“I want to taper off military aid within the next 10 years,” he said in an interview with The Economist on Friday, adding that he meant reducing it to zero from its current level of $3.8 billion a year.
If Netanyahu fulfills that pledge – as he did the earlier one – it would constitute nothing less than a revolution in US-Israeli ties. It would also reflect the internalization of one of the central lessons of the seven-front war that followed October 7: Israel must reduce its dependence on others for arms and munitions, even when those others are its closest allies.
At his recent meeting in Mar-a-Lago with
US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu said he told the president that he deeply appreciates the military assistance America has provided over the years – a Congressional Research Service report in May put that figure at roughly $174b. since 1948 – but that “here, too, we’ve come of age, and we’ve developed incredible capacity.”