After three years of armed conflict in Gaza, the stance of the US government toward the fighting has remained broadly consistent. Both the Biden and Trump administrations maintained largely unconditional arms transfers to Israel from October 7, 2023 onward, a period during which hostilities broadened across the region to draw in additional parties, among them Iran.

US aid has continued even as administrations offered only restrained objections to the military campaign conducted under Netanyahu's government in Gaza, to documented breaches of a ceasefire arrangement reached in 2024, and to obstacles that have stood in the way of a more durable resolution across the Palestinian territory and the broader region. Figures compiled through the current period put the Palestinian death toll in Gaza at a minimum of 74,243, a count that follows the Hamas-led assault on communities in southern Israel, where at least 1,139 people lost their lives.

Military and weapons transfers directed toward Israel since its founding in 1948 have totalled roughly $300 billion when adjusted for inflation — a figure that exceeds assistance extended to any other nation — placing it among the top recipients of such support in the history of foreign-aid allocations. Legislation passed in 2008 formally bound the government to ensuring Israel holds a military advantage — defined under the concept of Qualitative Military Edge — over the surrounding states, one of several measures through which statutory backing for Israel has been put on the books over the years.

Ties between the Israeli military and the United States run deep, spanning American-supplied aircraft, armoured vehicles, a range of munitions, and the layered air-defence network that includes the Iron Dome, David's Sling, and Iron Beam systems. Human rights organisations, among them Amnesty International, have documented repeated instances in which weapons manufactured in the United States were connected to the deaths of civilians in Gaza and surrounding areas, though independent monitors have not been permitted to enter the Palestinian territory by Israeli authorities — a situation that limits external verification of those findings.

William Hartung, a defence analyst who has examined aid flows between the United States and Israel, told a news outlet that, given the scale of American arms transfers and the nature of the conflict, a degree of American responsibility for what has unfolded in Gaza is difficult to set aside.

Appropriations allocated to Israel by the US government have totalled at least $25.5 billion in the period following 7 October 2023, drawn from federal funds built on tax revenue collected from American citizens. Government appropriations channelled to Israel represent the most direct avenue of military assistance from the United States, with $3.8 billion allocated annually under a ten-year agreement that the Obama administration put in place in 2016. Baked into that running total are the annual allocations of $3.8 billion approved for each of fiscal years 2024, 2025, and 2026.

Folded into the overall figure is a supplemental security allocation worth $14.1 billion — funds that cleared Congress and received presidential assent in April 2024. Two distinct channels make up the bulk of the package: a larger portion flows through Foreign Military Financing, a grant mechanism that covers purchases of American-made weapons and related services, while a smaller share goes toward offshore procurement arrangements that help Israel develop and expand its own arms manufacturing capacity. A separate share of the money is directed toward replenishing depleted weapons inventories and keeping aerial defence infrastructure operational.

Under a separate arrangement, munitions from the United States are held on Israeli soil through a dedicated stockpile programme, with those reserves becoming available to draw upon once Washington grants authorisation. Funding flows to Israel through two distinct channels — direct congressional appropriations and government-to-government weapons transfers — with the two streams running concurrently. Clearance for such transactions flows through the State Department, which carries an obligation to inform Congress, and payment can draw on military assistance funds or alternative financing arrangements. According to Hartung, the bulk of transactions in that market are financed through US foreign assistance funding.

Procurement agreements in the arms trade routinely span multiple years before equipment changes hands, with delivery schedules varying according to the complexity and technical specifications of what is being purchased — a pattern that keeps the defence establishments of both nations intertwined long after the original contracts were put in place. Hartung also observed that authorisations granted at one point in time carry consequences down the line, just as weaponry deployed in current operations can be traced to approvals that were issued years earlier.

State Department notifications to Congress form the basis of a tally showing weapons transfers authorised for Israel have reached a cumulative floor of at least $33.16 billion in the period stretching from October 7, 2023, onward. Under administrations led by both Biden and Trump, the State Department has invoked a national security emergency declaration on multiple occasions to channel arms support to Israel — a provision that, when triggered, permits the executive branch to proceed with certain transfers without full congressional review.

Among the arms transfers authorised by the State Department after 7 October 2023 were several thousand 120mm tank rounds cleared for export on two separate occasions — once in December 2023 and again in August 2024 — alongside F-15 aircraft and associated components valued at $18.82 billion, a deal that received authorisation in August 2024, and a further $7.4 billion package covering aerial bombs, guidance kits, fuses, and Hellfire missiles, which was authorised in the weeks following Trump's return to office in early 2025. A pre-approved consignment of 2,000-pound (900kg) bombs bound for Israel had its delivery hold — put in place under the previous administration — lifted by Trump around that period.

Human rights organisations have documented that the blast radius of such munitions — stretching as far as 0.4 kilometres — poses a documented threat to non-combatants in surrounding areas. Research published in 2024 documented that roughly 600 munitions of the 2,000-pound variety were deployed across heavily built-up areas of Gaza during the first 17 days following October 7, 2023.

House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Democrat Gregory Meeks announced in September 2025 that he had placed a hold on the proposed transfer of 40,000 large-payload bombs — each weighing 2,000 pounds — to Israel, a package valued at $2.8 billion, citing the absence of any assurance that those munitions would be deployed in line with US law and with adequate protections for civilian populations.

Washington has maintained a posture of diplomatic support alongside its arms transfers to Israel. Before the ceasefire of 11 October 2025 took hold, that support found its clearest outlet at the UN Security Council, where permanent-member status handed the US a veto — a tool it exercised on more than one occasion to prevent resolutions calling for an end to the fighting from advancing. On six separate occasions, the US cast a veto against Gaza-related resolutions at the council table, with the most recent instance occurring in September 2025.

Washington's posture toward the International Criminal Court shifted into an active effort to apply pressure on the tribunal, which moved to place Netanyahu — then serving as Israeli Prime Minister — and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant under arrest warrants. An executive order dated February 2025 laid out measures targeting the court and individuals operating alongside it, with those provisions representing Trump's opening move on the matter. Trump characterised the ICC's conduct as reflecting a pattern of actions directed at the United States and Israel that he said had no grounding in legitimate authority or legal basis.

Sanctions imposed by the United States have reached ICC personnel, a UN special rapporteur, and multiple Palestinian human rights organisations, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio outlined in July 2025 a coordinated government-wide effort aimed at curtailing the court's operations. Joyce Ajlouny, who serves as general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, told reporters that the administration's approach to the matter showed a lack of regard for people who had endured or survived war crimes and genocide.

Several steps taken by the United States have functioned to limit international mechanisms for holding Israel to account. Provisions within the legislation allocating the latest tranche of defence appropriations also bar any American dollars from flowing toward a UN Human Rights Council inquiry — established in 2021 — that examines conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory. Among the provisions in the legislation is a prohibition on directing federal money toward UNRWA, the United Nations body that provides assistance to Palestinian refugees.

Over the past three years, public sentiment within the United States has shifted noticeably, even as the executive branch has maintained its backing of Israel. Data gathered by a New York Times/Siena poll conducted in May showed that roughly 68 percent of Democrats were against further economic and military assistance to Israel, a share that had stood at around 45 percent three years prior. Polling data gathered by Gallup in February 2025 showed that roughly seven in ten Republicans expressed greater sympathy toward Israelis than Palestinians — a proportion that had nonetheless fallen by ten percentage points over the preceding twelve months.

Votes in both chambers on measures that would halt arms transfers to Israel have repeatedly fallen short of the two-thirds majority needed for such resolutions to carry binding weight, yet the roster of lawmakers prepared to back them has expanded over time — a pattern that Hartung characterised as a meaningful directional shift, pointing out that even putting forward an amendment along those lines would once have been treated as beyond the bounds of political possibility. Legislation aimed at halting arms transfers has been put forward by Senator Bernie Sanders alongside a group of House members.

Documentation assembled by Sanders' office in 2024 drew attention to the reported deployment of American-supplied ordnance — among them 120mm tank rounds — in connection with a number of high-casualty incidents involving Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including the death of five-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza City, alongside the reported application of Joint Direct Attack Munitions in several Israeli strikes that resulted in substantial civilian losses. Forty votes in the Senate carried a measure restricting the sale of military bulldozers when the chamber divided on the question in April 2024.

A 47-vote Senate majority moved a measure forward in September 2025, clearing the path for the State Department to examine the deaths of American citizens in the occupied West Bank at Israeli forces' hands — an outcome that carries the possibility of future constraints on military assistance.

A provision within the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act has drawn backing from a group of US legislators who favour deeper operational ties between American and Israeli armed forces. The House-passed version of the legislation, approved along party lines, includes provisions to expand technology-sharing arrangements between the US and Israel, with the potential to direct substantial American funding toward Israel's defence sector while reducing the role of congressional review. According to an analyst identified as Paul of A New Policy, the provision would shift defence ties away from the annual appropriations cycle and embed them instead within Pentagon contracting frameworks — structures that, in Paul's assessment, draw less public scrutiny, encounter fewer political hurdles, and align more closely with the broader US military-industrial apparatus.