US support has been vital to Israel\u2019s war machine, providing weapons that helped Israel kill more than 63,000 people in Gaza. Diplomatically, it uses its veto on the UN Security Council to block demands for a ceasefire in Gaza, despite the mounting death toll.<\/p>\n
It also supported Israel in the International Court of Justice, where Israel is accused of genocide, and sanctioned International Criminal Court members who issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes.<\/p>\n
The US\u2019 potential complicity in what many states and agencies recognise as a genocide has been called out by rights groups, who call on it to halt its support for Israel.<\/p>\n
But what if it did? What would happen if the US ended all support for Israel tomorrow?<\/p>\n
We asked four experts what they think: Hamze Attar, a defence analyst; Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political scientist; HA Hellyer, senior fellow at the Royal United Service Institute and Center for American Progress; and Daniel Levy, a former Israeli government adviser.<\/p>\n
What would happen internationally?<\/p>\n
\u201cI get the sense that many of the Western states that originally supported Israel are now feeling particularly helpless and are now really just willing Israel\u2019s downfall upon it. For many, even Germany, the post-war bond that has tied them to Israel has become so frayed it probably won\u2019t hold without the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy guess is [if US support for Israel ended tomorrow] they\u2019d all move against Israel immediately, though no one would really want to be the first.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what shape that would take, whether it would be sanctions, or even the enactment of Chapter 7 [of the UN Charter, authorising immediate intervention], but it would be quick.\u201d \u2013 Ori Goldberg<\/p>\n
What would happen regionally? Would Israel be attacked, as it claims?<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if you suddenly removed the US from the equation, you\u2019d be removing the one largest single [impediment] to some kind of settlement there\u2019s been.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael\u2019s imperative for genuinely integrating itself into the region will always be a second- or third-level priority, because American support underwrites its ability to act with impunity, as we\u2019ve seen vis-a-vis the Palestinians, the Lebanese, and the Syrians and so on.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis idea that Israel is one step away from being attacked just isn\u2019t the case and, many would argue, hasn\u2019t been the case for decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Syrian army isn\u2019t currently holding off from counter-attacking Israel because of the US. They\u2019re holding off from attacking because they\u2019re not interested in more wars, they know they\u2019d face massive resistance; the same is true for others.\u201d \u2013 HA Hellyer<\/p>\n
What would happen financially?<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael is very dependent on the US financially, but it wouldn\u2019t collapse entirely.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncreasingly, Israel has been dependent on the high-tech weapons sector, a lot of which the US supports, in terms of aid as well as almost limitless R&D opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Israel also relies economically on just having the US in its corner, like a coach waiting with the towel [loan guarantees and other support mechanisms].<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the overnight loss of US support would make things difficult, but it wouldn\u2019t be immediate, until we got to see massive layoffs in the Big Tech companies, and the military begin to falter.\u201d \u2013 Ori Goldberg<\/p>\n
What would happen in Israeli politics?<\/p>\n
\u201cNot as much as you think. Israel\u2019s settler community is already high on its own stash. They\u2019re going to continue with what they see as their God-given mission, whatever happens.<\/p>\n
\u201cNetanyahu would probably continue, too. He\u2019s not a magician. Much of what he says and does is just reflective of what much of Israeli society thinks anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure, he\u2019d reframe it. He could say that the reason we attacked Gaza was so that we\u2019d never have to be dependent on another state again, but I think he\u2019d probably survive.\u201d \u2013 Ori Goldberg<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerica really has been the gift that keeps on giving, especially to the Israeli right. If a Democrat is in power, they can say: \u2018Look how well we\u2019re managing them.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if someone like Trump is in power, they can say: \u2018Look, we must be doing something right: The US agrees with us.\u2019 Either way, they gain legitimacy. Without the US, that\u2019s not really there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of its internal politics and its treatment of Palestinians, the US also gives Israel absolute impunity. For instance, its politicians can wage a genocidal war on Gaza or cheer on settlements with no apparent cost.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn any other society, that cost would come from other states, or their own society\u2019s moral compass. We don\u2019t seem to have either of those here.\u201d \u2013 Daniel Levy<\/p>\n
What would happen to its military?<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the US vanished tomorrow, Israel could probably sustain its war on Gaza for around a year, but its priorities would change as it became significantly more vulnerable.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor instance, they\u2019d be very aware that every bullet or bomb they used in Gaza was one less for their own defence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout the US, the blocking of the commercial satellites that Israel relies upon to obscure its territory would end. This would allow its adversaries to see into its territory immediately. It would also lose the defence systems, such as Iron Dome and Arrow systems, which are partly funded by the US, leaving it much more open to attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe loss of the US would also mean that Israel has to go looking for other military suppliers, most probably from NATO countries in Europe, because much of the equipment is compatible. However, with Europe already having a weapons shortfall in relation to what it sees as the threat from Russia, that\u2019s not going to happen quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cEurope is also going to charge Israel for any weapons, which \u2013 under the current military aid programme \u2013 the US doesn\u2019t, so even if another country did step up, Israel isn\u2019t going to be able to afford to purchase weapons on anything like the scale it has.\u201d \u2013 Hamze Attar<\/p>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2023-06-29T172808Z_111698780_RC24T1AG3H6E_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-MILITARY-1748771054.jpg\")
Israel is the only country that has a bespoke version of the US F-35 fighter jet [Amir Cohen\/Reuters]What would happen in Gaza and the occupied West Bank?<\/p>\n
\u201cI think once the senior echelons of the army got wind of what was happening, they\u2019d be calling for the war to end immediately.\u201d \u2013 Ori Goldberg<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the central bank and the army would realise almost immediately that they didn\u2019t have the weapons or the money to continue the war.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter that, depending on what other states do, both regionally and in the West, the war would become politically and economically unsustainable.\u201d \u2013 Daniel Levy<\/p>\n
\u201cMy guess is they\u2019d adopt a holding pattern in Gaza and the West Bank, buying themselves time. Israel\u2019s reputation in terms of international public opinion is already rock bottom, but US support has shielded it from actual international accountability.<\/p>\n
\u201cEssentially, without the US, Israel would be treated like an international pariah state, like apartheid South Africa had been. The apartheid leadership also eventually decided it had to change, not because they were particularly nice people, but because they reached a point where they had no choice, and decided to salvage what they could.\u201d \u2013 HA Hellyer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been able to rely on the United States\u2019 absolute backing throughout his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,5620,12,803,129,3,2485,21,19,22,20,25,1209,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-127019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-middle-east","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-palestine","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-us-canada","21":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}