As support for Israel declines in the U.S., the ‘Special Relationship 2.0’ is starting to take shape

This month, Israel and the United States are expected to begin negotiations on a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) that would outline the United States’ plans to support Israel after the current MOU expires in 2028. Chances are this will look like a very different conversation than in the past.

In recent months, there’s been a lot of noise around the idea of ending U.S. military aid to Israel. It’s an idea that has long been pursued by Palestine solidarity activists and, in the past, has also been floated by the Israeli right and their fellow travelers, who thought the aid wasn’t worth restricting Israel’s “freedom to act.” But surprisingly, the current proposal to end the annual grant of Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to Israel—which makes up most, though not all, of the annual aid package—comes from none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is championed in Washington by South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, the biggest hawk in the Senate. 

What explains this?

Back in January, the Institute for Middle East Understanding’s Policy Project published a timely and detailed backgrounder on what is actually going on here. 

What emerges is a plan to continue aid to Israel in a different form. Instead of sending money to Israel, which they have to spend with American corporations, Congress would appropriate money for joint development and production projects instead. This can be presented as an investment in American jobs in partnership with Israel rather than as taxpayer assistance to a foreign government.

The time to make such a move is now. Israel’s popularity has plummeted, and the once-certain annual military aid package is now up for debate. While the current Congress is still inclined to fund an unimpeded tidal wave of weapons and money to Israel, growing opposition in both parties makes even the near future of such aid uncertain.

In fact, a preview of what the new “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel might look like was just unveiled at a technology expo last weekend in Washington DC where Israeli military officials joined a former Biden official in laying out how U.S. support for Israel’s military can continue unabated in an era where Israel has lost nearly all political support following the Gaza genocide.

The “Special Relationship 2.0”

While Netanyahu and Graham make the political case for this transformation of American aid to Israel, there needs to be a private industry partner program, not merely a bunch of individual corporations, to make this work for Israel.

The mechanics of this are now starting to come into focus.

At the AI+ Expo in Washington last weekend, former Israeli Military Intelligence head Amos Yadlin and Joe Biden’s former Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides presented the US-Israel Technology Alliance — Strategic Technology Compact.

The Compact is a joint project of the American think tank the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) and the Israeli security nonprofit group MIND Israel, headed by Yadlin.

The project involves both the United States and Israel each committing $1 billion to joint ventures, much of which will be geared to AI, cyberwarfare, and other new forms of killing, many of which have been battle-tested in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. 

That project is meant to be a starter; more money would certainly be spent if the program is successful, and there’s every reason to think it will be. 

A look at the main players here makes their agenda clear: deepen U.S.-Israeli military collaboration in a way that can weather the shifting politics around Israel.

In fact, MIND Israel is squarely focused on transitioning Israel’s partnership with the United States to a new model that can endure in the new political environment. 

Their mission is focused on shaping Israel’s national security policy, but their focus is on the U.S., and specifically on Donald Trump’s administration. In a paper that made recommendations for how to utilize the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) to enhance Israel’s military and economic reach, the organization stated, “To enlist the Trump administration’s support for advancing the initiative, Israel and its partners need to make changes to ensure it aligns with the President’s distinctive worldview – both substantively and narratively: generating clear economic benefits for the United States, incorporating the American private sector, highlighting short-term gains, and building political support within the President’s inner circle.”

This thinking is precisely aligned with Israel’s idea of moving away from aid to a model that vastly increases funding for joint projects, and SCSP’s mission fits squarely within a field Israel is looking to promote: AI warfare 

SCSP’s mission is: “To make recommendations to strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness as artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies are reshaping our national security, economy, and society. We want to ensure that America is positioned and organized to win the techno-economic competition between now and 2030, the critical window for shaping the future.”

So, their mandate fits squarely with what Israel wants to do, and this partnership can be sold to the American public as an investment, and as one that will help create more jobs in the tech sector. Indeed, that is precisely the case that Nides made in speaking about the initiative to The Times of Israel: “The United States has lots of technology. We’re leading in technology and AI and innovation. It’s not lost on anyone that Israel is the startup nation. These two countries have been working together to create technology innovations and breakthroughs. These two nations working collectively together is both good for Americans, the average American, and good for the average Israeli.”

What he doesn’t say, but what becomes apparent in the description lifted from the draft proposal, is that the one-sided benefits for Israel remain largely the same. While Israel’s supporters in the U.S. have tried to make the case that aid to Israel is an investment and that it is good for America, less and less people believe that, whether they are supporters of Palestinian rights or America Firsters. 

The same can be said of the case laid out in the draft proposal. “The United States gains a trusted, battle-tested technology ally that strengthens American leadership in AI, cyber, energy, quantum, and industrial resilience. Israel gains durable access to the world’s most important technology ecosystem – including federal programs, laboratories, capital pathways, procurement channels, and scale-up opportunities.”

Israel, in other words, gains major, tangible benefits. The U.S., which, by the proposal’s own wording, has little need for an ally that merely mimics the U.S.’ strengths on a smaller scale, gains nothing more than what it already has: a country that has the existing conflicts and the mandate from its own population to field test new military technology on both militant fighters and civilians. 

No aid for Israel’s crimes

This all brings us back to the upcoming negotiation, which is getting ready to start over the future of U.S. aid to Israel. Israel’s popularity has plummeted, the war on Iran has accelerated Israel’s concern about its political standing, and the once-certain annual military aid package is now up for debate. While the current Congress is still inclined to fund an unimpeded tidal wave of weapons and money to Israel, growing opposition in both parties makes even the near future of such aid uncertain. Put bluntly, the once sacrosanct American aid to Israel is no longer untouchable, and the Iran war may have put the final nail in its coffin. 

Yadlin knows this, telling the Times of Israel, “The model in which Israel is assisted by the United States and receives aid has a very low chance of continuing under any future administration, and perhaps even under the Trump administration, so we need to find a new basis for the relationship that is a transition from aid to partnership.”

By changing over to this “joint venture/partnership” model rather than an aid-based one, some of the arguments against aid to Israel are nullified. Primarily, the point that Israel, a relatively wealthy country, does not need aid, but can afford to buy what it wants. 

Moreover, while this arrangement still does little to benefit the United States, it can be sold as a program that “creates jobs.” This argument has been used in defense of aid to Israel as well, but when the money is going to joint ventures that explore “new technology,” this sounds more profitable than a grant to buy existing weapons, which would very likely be sold elsewhere if not to Israel. 

Pro-Israel forces in D.C. also recognize the political realities here and have picked up the baton. The pro-Israel, anti-Netanyahu Israel Policy Forum suggested recently that “There might also be areas where the two countries benefit from different types of partnership such as co-production, shared investment, or joint research and development,” echoing the far right’s strategy to protect American aid to Israel by changing its form rather than its substance.

Of course, all of those arguments are facile and phony. As IMEU puts it, “While a reduction or elimination of FMF appropriations to Israel might appear to decrease American taxpayer-funding for Israel, by simultaneously increasing the co-development and co-production of weapons with Israel the American taxpayer is still on the hook… U.S. taxpayers pay for Israeli weapons manufacturers to develop weapons systems which preponderantly benefit Israel, not the U.S.”

And that is all based on the coldest of calculations, a mere profit and loss issue. When we add in the far more meaningful human costs of strengthening Israel’s aggressive capabilities, reinforcing its complete denial of the rights of Palestinians, and the ongoing Israeli practice of field testing its technologies on overwhelmingly civilian victims in Palestine, Lebanon, and elsewhere, the costs become immeasurable.

It is, therefore, crucial to move beyond the arguments that Israel does not need aid to the more important one raised by actions like Bernie Sanders’ recent Joint Resolutions of Disapproval: Israel has proven itself to be a country that will use weapons to commit the most heinous of crimes, up to, and including, genocide. There must be no aid, no sales, no cooperation with Israel on military matters whatsoever. Any breach of that principle makes us all complicit in Israel’s crimes. 

Mitchell Plitnick
Mitchell Plitnick is the president of ReThinking Foreign Policy. He is the co-author of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics and maintains the Cutting Through newsletter on Substack at mitchellplitnick.substack.com/.

Mitchell’s previous positions include vice president at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Director of the U.S. Office of B’Tselem, and Co-Director of Jewish Voice for Peace.