Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to wean Israel off U.S. military support within a decade as his country pushes to strengthen ties with Gulf states, he said in an interview that aired on Sunday, Reuters reports.
"I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have," Netanyahu told CBS News' "60 Minutes" program.
Netanyahu said Israel receives about $3.8 billion of U.S. military aid a year. The U.S. has agreed to provide a total of $38 billion in military aid to Israel from 2018 to 2028.
But it is "absolutely" the right time to possibly reset the U.S.-Israeli financial relationship, Netanyahu said.
"I don't want to wait for the next Congress," he told CBS. "I want to start now."
Israel has long had bipartisan consensus within the U.S. Congress for military aid, but support from lawmakers and the public has frayed since the outbreak of war in Gaza in October 2023.
Sixty percent of U.S. adults have an unfavorable view, opens new tab of Israel, and 59% had little or no confidence in Netanyahu to do the right thing regarding world affairs, according to a Pew survey conducted in March. Both percentages were up seven percentage points from a year earlier.
Netanyahu said deteriorating support for Israel in the United States "correlates almost 100% with the geometric rise of social media."
He said several countries, which he did not identify, have "basically manipulated" social media in a way that "hurt us badly," though he personally did not believe in censorship.
