The Debate Over Israel Aid Is Coming. Congress Wants To Future-Proof the Relationship First.

U.S. aid to Israel is one of the most contentious foreign policy issues in America. The last three years of wars in the Middle East—culminating in the latest war with Iran—have soured a majority of Americans on the U.S.-Israeli relationship, polling shows. And the aid is up for debate soon, as President Barack Obama’s “memorandum of understanding” guaranteeing $3.8 billion per year for Israel expires in fiscal year 2028.

Earlier this year, Axios reported that Israel was looking for a new memorandum of understanding that would last twice as long as the previous one but shift the money from direct aid to joint weapons production. Official talks between the two countries began this week, according to the Israeli Defense Ministry. And while officials were meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a letter to Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R–Ind.) praising “our plan” to replace financial subsidies with military-industrial integration within a decade.

The U.S.-Israel Framework for Upgraded Technologies, Unified Research, and Enhanced Security (FUTURES) Act is a step in that direction, creating a new office at the Pentagon for “industrial cooperation” and “data fusion” between the two militaries, with a focus on technologies such as artificial intelligence. In order to avoid a full congressional vote, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R–Ala.) inserted the law into Section 224 of the National Defense Authorization Act, the must-pass U.S. military budget bill. Separately, Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) created an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act making it illegal not to share information with the Israeli government, in perpetuity.

Critics say that Section 244 would impose even more onerous requirements on the U.S. government than the financial aid. “We are a sovereign country,” the libertarian-leaning, outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) wrote in a statement promising to oppose Section 224. “America calls the shots, not the prime minister of any other country,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) said during a House Armed Services Committee debate on Thursday, citing Netanyahu’s letter to Stutzman.

Khanna was nearly alone in his opposition. Section 224 passed the committee by a voice vote. Massie now has a chance to force a full floor vote of the House of Representatives on whether to keep the section, which he has promised to do. Rogers himself downplayed the importance of his own amendment. Section 224 “doesn’t create any new programs within the Department of Defense. It simply adds transparency and improves efficiency by designating a single official to coordinate existing initiatives,” he wrote in a statement.

“If this [bill] doesn’t do anything, why is it needed, and why are they only doing it for Israel?” says Josh Paul, the former U.S. State Department official in charge of weapons sales from 2012 to 2023. By forcing the Pentagon to prioritize Israeli integration, the bill shifts “the financial outflow from the (relatively transparent) foreign assistance budget to the (famously opaque) defense budget” and “introduces financial opportunities that could eventually eclipse the billions provided in traditional military aid.”

J Street, a liberal pro-Israel lobbying organization that opposes Netanyahu’s policies, also says that Section 224 is a rushed attempt to avoid “substantial debate between agencies, policymakers, Congress and the U.S. public” about the future of the relationship.

Cotton’s amendment, meanwhile, directs the president to “expand and enhance intelligence sharing with the Government of Israel,” which “shall not be suspended, reduced, or otherwise materially limited except on the basis of a specific and identifiable national security concern.” It also extends a similar mandate to any Middle Eastern country allied with Israel under the Abraham Accords. The president would have to report to Congress on the progress of this integration every five years, and to disclose any reduction in intelligence sharing within 15 days.

No other country in the world has this kind of mandated intelligence sharing under U.S. law. The closest equivalent is the Five Eyes, a coalition of spy agencies in English-speaking countries that agree to share electronic data by default. But the Five Eyes is governed by executive agreements, not a legally-binding treaty or act of Congress, and the U.S. government has plenty of discretion to withhold information from the other four “eyes.” For example, the Trump administration declared intelligence on Russian-Ukrainian peace talks for American eyes only. 

“The goal here is to tie the hands of a future president who tries to de-exceptionalize the U.S.-Israel security relationship, in this case by requiring them to publicly justify any downgrade to U.S.-Israel intel sharing, in the hope that they’d be pressured or embarrassed into reconsidering,” says former U.S. Army Maj. Harrison Mann, who served in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Middle Eastern office. But, he says, there is “no shortage” of legitimate “national security concerns” within the U.S. intelligence community if a future administration was determined to stop giving Israel information.

Cotton did not respond to a request for comment. The text of his amendment says that “timely and actionable intelligence sharing between the United States and Israel has saved United States personnel and property in the region and should remain a central pillar of the bilateral security relationship.”

Mann disputes Cotton’s description, arguing that “Israel’s priorities and the limits of its capabilities” means that U.S. intelligence sharing is “largely a one-way street.”

Intelligence sharing has also involved the U.S. more deeply in Middle Eastern conflicts than the public realizes. When the U.S. military sent intelligence teams to Israel and began flying drones over Gaza in November 2023, the Biden administration initially denied that they were involved in the Israeli targeting process. After Israeli forces killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar a year later, President Joe Biden took credit for helping track and target him—an admission that his administration had been lying before.

Unlike Section 224, the Cotton amendment has not run into public opposition in Congress yet. But it may be trying to preempt changing political winds. Last month, 12 senators sent U.S. Central Command a letter asking about the extent of U.S. intelligence involvement in Israel’s war with Lebanon. (A staffer for one of those senators tells Reason that they have not received a response.) On Thursday, 91 members of Congress voted for an (ultimately-failed) war powers resolution that would cut off any such U.S. support in Lebanon.

Paul and Mann are both symbols of this shift in opinion. After resigning from the State Department in protest against the Gaza war, Paul founded a political action committee called A New Policy, dedicated to changing U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mann resigned from the U.S. military in protest of that same conflict, and joined the nonprofit Win Without War. 

“There has been a transformation in U.S. public opinion, and no one believes the current level of unconditional support for Israel is politically sustainable,” says Paul. “What we’re looking at for the remainder of this year therefore is perhaps their last window to lock America into a relationship with Israel that is insulated from the political process—and that is insulated from American democracy.”

Khanna echoed the same sentiment in his committee speech against Section 224. Americans “want less cooperation and blank checks to Israel, not more,” he said. “Only the United States Congress would dream up at this moment, let’s actually do more for Israel, not less. And that’s what Section 224 does. It’s a very simple thing.”