Knesset members and experts debated whether Israel should reduce its dependence on U.S. aid in a subcommittee meeting on Monday, indicating greater acceptance of what was once a fringe idea in Israel.

The meeting was one in a series that began as the Biden administration held up weapons shipments to Israel, a decision that President Donald Trump reversed this week. Israel also took recent steps to reduce its dependence on the U.S. by bolstering its domestic arms manufacturing. Likud lawmaker Amit Halevy, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense  Subcommittee for Security Doctrine and Force Buildup, invited several experts who supported scaling down or rethinking aid.

Halevy cited former U.S. envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell as having once said that Washington can use military aid as leverage to force Israel into peace talks, and asked attendees to consider the influence of military aid on Israeli decision-makers.

“What is its influence on Israel’s status in the region and the world? How is it seen in American politics and society and what is its future in light of the changes in American society?” Halevy asked.

Gideon Israel, president of the Jerusalem-Washington Center, argued that Israel’s reliance on the U.S. during emergencies is a major challenge for the Jewish state.

“Isn’t it strange that within 24 hours of Oct. 7 we were asking for aid from the U.S.? That we couldn’t fight the war on our own? Not three weeks passed and we already had a package of requests for $15 billion of aid? This tendency to beg, where not a moment goes by and we already ask for help from the U.S. is an Israeli quality that has existed for over 50 years … and no one thinks, ‘wait a minute, maybe we need to reevaluate,’” Israel said.

“There are no free lunches,” he added. “We have to pay attention to this tendency to be schnorrers [Yiddish for beggars] where we don’t even consider doing what a sovereign state needs to do to be ready for war.” 

Yoram Ettinger, a former Israeli diplomat and analyst who focuses on Israeli security, argued that aid is “a constant tool of pressure on Israel,” and suggested that Jerusalem change the way it talks about U.S. aid, from words of gratitude to saying that “no American investment brings in a greater return on investment.” 

“We are the flagship store of the American defense industry,” Ettinger said. “When on Oct. 26 [2024] there was an Israeli Air Force operation and 100 American-made planes flew over Iran … this immediately promoted the American industry’s sales. We are a laboratory in battle conditions.” 

Ettinger suggested that the term “foreign aid” has negative connotations and that, moving forward, it should be designated differently, towards joint defense and manufacturing projects.

Yesh Atid lawmakers in the subcommittee pushed back on Ettinger’s logic, with MK Meir Cohen saying, “I know that we are their training field and that when we use a plane they sell it more … [but] the relationship is built on the backing the U.S. gives us on almost every matter … Humility is a good thing. The U.S. gives us much more than we can give them.”

“In times in which the whole world was against us, we found the U.S. was there as our greatest supporter, even when they didn’t agree with us,” Cohen stated.

MK Moshe Tur-Paz said it’s important to leave the conduit of aid between Israel and the U.S. open so that it can be ramped up in an emergency. 

Raphael BenLevi, a research fellow at the Misgav Institute for Zionist Strategy and National Security, explained that since the Camp David Accords in 1979, the U.S. has used aid as a “carrot, not a stick,” to encourage Israel to take actions that Washington wants, rather than threaten to take aid away.

As a result, U.S. aid has become “part of the central policy considerations of Israel in the last 30 years,” BenLevi said. He noted that this led Israel to accept territorial concessions in the past, including returning the Sinai to Egypt, which ended with a peace deal, but also in 1999 when the U.S. signed the first 10-year Memorandum of Understanding for aid after then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was willing to give roughly 97% of the West Bank to the Palestinians, which Yasser Arafat rejected.

U.S. aid “shifts the whole scale to one side … and contributes to Israel having a more defensive strategy, relying on the Iron Dome,” BenLevi said. “Aid is not the only lever of pressure that the strongest country in the world has on any country … but you can see it plays a very strong role in swaying Israeli decisions in one direction.”

Martin Ingall, a former AIPAC lobbyist who advised Israeli government ministries on weapons financing, U.S. aid policy and joint defense manufacturing, including of F-35 fighter jets, said that Israel is in a “catch-22: We want to have a good relationship with the U.S. and want to be intertwined with the U.S. We want their technology and all the benefits of a positive relationship. But we don’t want to be coerced into things, to be withheld and pushed around … We want freedom and flexibility.”

“Independence means weaning ourselves off of military aid,” he said. “If we understand that, it will give us more flexibility to be ourselves … Unfortunately, if you stand up and say that in the Defense Ministry today, you’ll be pushed aside. You’ll be canceled.” 

Ingall estimated that it would take at least a decade for the defense establishment to make the necessary adjustments to phase out U.S. military aid.

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Sasson Hadad, who ran the IDF’s budget and was part of Israel’s negotiations for the current MOU on military aid, which expires in 2028, argued that Israel is dependent on the U.S. in many ways, and that it is a partnership that should continue.

“We have an economy that has proven itself in great crises. It is very stable and we have engines of growth. The economic significance of the aid is shrinking,” he said.

Hadad argued that “it’s healthier not to rely on the Americans too much. What needs to guide us is the good of the State of Israel.” A better way to look at U.S. aid is how it can be channeled in a better way to strengthen Israel, such as expanded air defense programs, he said.

However, Hadad said that Israel needs to retain a strong partnership with the U.S. because “the world is becoming more bipolar. There was a time that China looked very nice to us … but if we would have joined the other bloc, we would have gotten nothing [in the war of the last year]. China would have turned its back to us and so would the U.S… Dependence [on the U.S.] is part of how Israel views its national security.” 

Dor Shapira, head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s North America Bureau, said that many of the speakers in the committee “were drawing the wrong picture.” 

“We do not go to Congress and beg ‘please give us $3.8 billion,’” he said. “The whole last MOU was built on cooperation. The money stays in America and America will make more money from it. The missile defense agreement was built on joint technological development … We work together on shared scientific funds for the development of tunnel defense [methods] and drones, outside of the framework of the MOU and military aid.”

However, the diplomat said, “the fact that we have a partnership with the U.S. doesn’t mean that the sides are even. We get a lot of help in defense and diplomatically, so there is no balance in this relationship.”

Former Israeli Deputy National Security Advisor Chuck Freilich, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, said he wanted to bring the meeting back to “current Israeli reality and not the lies about our nation standing up strong.” 

“I almost felt bad for the Americans that they have to give us aid and we’re doing them a favor,” he said sarcastically in response to the previous speakers. “Maybe before the war you believed that aid can be cut, but to think that now in our strategic reality is a delusion.”

Freilich said that if aid stops, other parts of the relationship may become less stable as well. He pointed to the “diplomatic umbrella” that the U.S. spreads over Israel, in addition to the military aid and asked if “after 76 years of independence, could Israel exist without the U.S.?”

“Maybe, but it is a much less safe existence and with much less economic and social welfare,” he said. “It’s a reality no one wants to return to, the security and economic level of the ‘70s.” 

“Are there conditions? Strings? Certainly. There are no free lunches,” he added, but unlike previous speaker Gideon Israel who used the same formulation, Freilich presented the price as necessary for Israel to pay.

Freilich pointed out that progressives in the Democratic Party have become more comfortable with speaking out against aid to Israel, and it will only get worse if the U.S. and Israel do not see eye-to-eye on the Palestinians.

“Israel has policies going back decades that go against the American policy on everything about the Palestinians … Despite Israel saying ‘no’ and doing what it wants on central issues, the relations continued. If this debate [on conditioning aid] continues in Washington, the angle could be totally different. It could be ‘we give them money year after year, the American public hates foreign aid, and then they go do whatever they want,’” he warned.

Freilich also expressed skepticism about Israelis who treat President Donald Trump as “almost the messiah,” noting that Republicans “also have isolationists and opponents to foreign aid.” 

Halevy responded that Israel “may need to be prepared to lead the change so that we don’t get stuck in the [American] dispute over what should happen.”