TEHRAN — Donald Trump told Fox News on November 3 that U.S. aid to Israel is “cut off at the end of the year.” It is not. Draft terms reported Monday by Yedioth Ahronoth show Washington and Israel negotiating a memorandum that would halve direct military financing and end it only in 2033.

Israeli negotiators were stunned by the remark, the paper said, and could not work out what he meant.

An Israeli official offered a simpler reading to the Hebrew-language newspaper. Trump was trying to help Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who campaigned on ending military aid to Israel. It failed. El-Sayed became the first Muslim elected to the Senate, and Democrats took both chambers of Congress.

The 2016 memorandum, which runs through September 2028, pays Israel $3.3 billion a year in Foreign Military Financing, $33 billion over ten years, plus $500 million annually for missile defense.

The draft keeps the yearly figure roughly level but for five years, 2029 through 2033, about $16.5 billion in all. Then it supposedly stops. Money for Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow would rise by an undisclosed amount.

Netanyahu has sought to recast the relationship around arms purchases and joint defense projects rather than direct American grants. In January, he told The Economist that he wanted to taper off American aid within ten years, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican and reliable Israel backer who has since died, replied that “we need not wait ten years.”

Netanyahu has since asked for the decline to begin in Trump’s last two years. Ambassador Mike Huckabee says the new pact “ends aid & will be based on trade.”

Precedent suggests the money will be hard to cut. Washington signed three ten-year pacts in a row, $21.3 billion in 1998, $32 billion in 2008 and $38 billion in 2016, and much of the cash returns to American military-industrial plants.

Aides to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and officials from Israel’s War Ministry and embassy reportedly want the text signed before the new Congress is sworn in during January, since lawmakers appropriate the money every year.

Israeli officials reportedly fear Democrats will stall payments. Democrats warn that Israel can forget about aid if Netanyahu remains its face.

Pew finds 60 percent of Americans view Israel unfavorably, up from 53 percent in 2025. Yet the proposed agreement would preserve arms sales and expand joint missile-defense funding, leaving Washington’s military backing largely intact despite mounting public opposition.