Israel's Washington lifeline wobbles after US midterms and Trump's aid threat

Israel's faith in rock-solid American backing just got rattled from two directions at once. President Donald Trump said in a Fox News interview this week that he would halt $3.8bn in US military aid to Israel two years earlier than planned. Israel's president called it "a bolt from the blue," and two days on, officials were still trying to figure out whether he meant it, according to Yedioth Ahronoth, which ran the headline: "Nobody knows anything."

The timing stings because it lands right after US midterm results that turned Israel into a campaign punching bag. Democratic candidates ripped into Israel's actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and Trump himself blamed the Iran War — a conflict Israel's leader is widely seen as having pushed him toward — for the Republican rout. Vice-President JD Vance went further, listing the US relationship with Israel as one of four key reasons voters walked away.

"That might be even worse than what happened in the midterms," Israeli analyst Yaakov Katz told the BBC, pointing at Vance's finger-wagging. One US official with knowledge of the situation said Israel's political class grasped that things were shifting, but not how fast. The official, speaking anonymously, described it as a move toward being willing to criticise Israel when warranted — while insisting the bedrock relationship survives.

In Israel, the blame game started fast. Opposition figures piled on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with one saying the results showed "just how toxic Netanyahu has become." His rival Gadi Eisenkot promised to "renew and deepen" the US partnership, while Yair Lapid called for returning to the old rule: don't pick sides in American politics. Netanyahu himself stayed quiet.

The money is not the main worry — US military aid makes up less than 10% of Israel's annual defence budget. Katz warned the real exposure is spare parts, weapons and missile-defence systems, and the risk that a Democrat-controlled Congress slows joint projects even without the two-thirds majority needed to override Trump. "Everything that Israel used to get in a simpler, easier process will now potentially be much more complicated," he said.

Not everyone in the American corner is signalling retreat. US ambassador Mike Huckabee dismissed other countries' sanctions as "irrational," and Israel's UN ambassador Danny Danon said Israel can feel good about the US Security Council veto for the next two years. But he added a caveat: criticism is coming from Republicans too, and "it will be harder for us." All of it plays out as Israel's own deadlocked election leaves its president deciding whether Netanyahu or Eisenkot gets first crack at forming a government.