How Much Aid Does the US Give Israel and What Rules Apply?

The United States gives Israel roughly $3.8 billion per year in military aid under a ten-year agreement running through fiscal year 2028, and it has added billions more in emergency spending since October 2023. Cumulatively, U.S. bilateral assistance and missile defense funding to Israel totals approximately $174 billion since 1946, making Israel the largest recipient of American foreign aid in the post-World War II era.¹ Adjusted for inflation, that figure reaches roughly $298 billion in 2024 dollars.

Nearly all of that money is military. Economic grants used to be part of the package but were phased out, with the last Economic Support Fund disbursement going to Israel in fiscal year 2007.¹

The Ten-Year Agreement

The current framework is a Memorandum of Understanding signed in September 2016 covering fiscal years 2019 through 2028. Under it, the United States pledged $38 billion in total military assistance over the decade, the largest such commitment to any single country in American history.² The $3.8 billion annual figure breaks into two parts:

$3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing, a grant program that funds Israeli purchases of American defense equipment, training, and services. Israel is the largest global recipient of this program.³
$500 million for cooperative missile defense, funding joint U.S.-Israeli research, development, and production of systems including Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and the Arrow family of interceptors.⁴

One important legal point: the MOU is a diplomatic commitment, not a law. Congress must still pass annual appropriations bills to actually deliver the money. In practice, Congress has consistently met or exceeded the baseline every year the agreement has been in effect. The MOU also allows both governments to agree on missile defense funding above the $500 million cap during exceptional circumstances such as a major armed conflict.

Emergency Spending Since October 2023

The $3.8 billion baseline understates recent totals. In April 2024, Congress passed the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act as part of a larger national security package that also included Ukraine and Indo-Pacific funding. The Israel portion provided at least $9.6 billion in additional defense spending: roughly $4.4 billion for operations and maintenance, $4 billion for procurement to replenish Iron Dome and David’s Sling interceptors, and $1.2 billion for research and development.⁵⁶

Emergency assistance continued into 2025. In February 2025, the Trump administration declared an emergency under the Arms Export Control Act to expedite roughly $4 billion in arms sales to Israel, bypassing the normal congressional review period. The administration also released a Biden-era hold on 2,000-pound bomb deliveries and exempted Israel and Egypt from a broader freeze on U.S. foreign aid.¹

How the Money Has To Be Spent

Foreign Military Financing generally has to be spent on American-made products, sending the dollars back to U.S. defense contractors. For decades Israel had a unique carve-out called Off-Shore Procurement, letting it spend a portion of its FMF grant on equipment built by its own defense industry.

The current MOU phases that exception out entirely. In fiscal year 2019, Israel could spend roughly 25 percent of its FMF on domestically produced goods; the percentage decreases over the life of the agreement, with a steeper reduction in the final years, reaching zero by fiscal year 2028.³ Once the phase-out is complete, every FMF dollar will be spent on U.S.-origin defense articles and services.² The Arms Export Control Act supplies the underlying legal framework for these procurement transactions.⁷

The Qualitative Military Edge Requirement

Federal law goes beyond funding Israel directly. It also requires the U.S. government to actively preserve Israel’s military advantage over its neighbors. Under the Arms Export Control Act, any proposed sale of defense equipment to another Middle Eastern country must include a certification that the sale will not undermine Israel’s “qualitative military edge.” The statute defines that edge as the ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state, coalition, or non-state actor while sustaining minimal casualties, using superior weapons and intelligence capabilities in sufficient quantity.⁸

In practice, every major U.S. arms deal in the region gets filtered through the question of how it affects Israel’s position. When the U.S. sells advanced aircraft to a Gulf state, for example, the certification must analyze Israel’s capacity to respond to those improved regional capabilities and identify any new training or equipment Israel might need in response.

Legal Conditions on the Aid

Several statutes impose conditions on U.S. military aid to any recipient country, Israel included. Enforcement has been contested in recent years.

The Leahy Law

The Leahy Law prohibits the U.S. from providing assistance to any foreign military unit when the Secretary of State has credible information that the unit committed a gross violation of human rights, defined as torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, or rape carried out under official authority.⁹ The prohibition can be lifted if the foreign government takes effective steps to bring the responsible members to justice, such as impartial investigations and appropriate sentences.¹⁰ A parallel version of the law applies to Department of Defense funding under a separate statutory provision.

Restrictions Tied to Humanitarian Access

Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act bars security assistance and arms sales to any country whose government restricts the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid, directly or indirectly. The restriction applies even to partial limitations. The President can waive it by determining that continued assistance serves the national security interest, but must first notify the relevant congressional committees and give reasons.¹¹

Both statutes have been at the center of policy disputes since October 2023. The Biden administration issued guidance in 2024 (NSM-20) requiring Israel to demonstrate compliance with humanitarian access obligations, but the State Department ultimately declined to make a formal finding of violation. The Trump administration rescinded that compliance framework in February 2025.¹

End-Use Monitoring

When the U.S. transfers weapons abroad, the Arms Export Control Act requires monitoring from the point of transfer through final disposal, covering articles moved under both that Act and the Foreign Assistance Act.¹² The program, called Golden Sentry, requires recipient countries to use transferred articles only for their intended purpose, maintain security comparable to U.S. standards, and permit observation by U.S. representatives.¹³ The framework applies to Israel on the same terms as any other recipient country, though the volume of transfers makes the oversight task unusually large.

1
Congressional Research Service. U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel: Overview and Developments Since October 7, 2023
2
The White House. Fact Sheet: Memorandum of Understanding Reached With Israel
3
United States Department of State. U.S. Security Cooperation With Israel
4
Congressional Research Service. U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel: Overview and Developments Since October 7, 2023
5
Congress.gov. H.R.8034 – Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024
6
Congress.gov. H.R.815 – Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2024
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 22 U.S.C. Ch. 39 – Arms Export Control
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 22 U.S.C. 2776 – Reports and Certifications to Congress on Military Export Transactions
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 22 U.S.C. 2378d – Limitation on Assistance to Security Forces
10
U.S. Department of State. About the Leahy Law
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 22 U.S.C. 2378-1 – Prohibition on Assistance to Countries That Restrict United States Humanitarian Assistance
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 22 U.S.C. 2785 – End-Use Monitoring of Defense Articles and Defense Services
13
Defense Security Cooperation Agency. End Use Monitoring