The Washington Post ran a rather extraordinary exclusive report today, under the headline: "Netanyahu Backs GOP Effort To End U.S. Military Aid To Israel." On the face of it, this is big news. Israel currently receives something like $3.8 billion in U.S. money each year as military aid -- money that (mostly) turns right around and is spent back here at home on American military weapons and weapons systems (which boosts the American economy while giving Israel a whole bunch of free weapons each and every year). But this aid has become increasingly problematic because Americans' views of Israel have turned startlingly negative, ever since the war with Hamas in Gaza started.

A recent poll showed a jump upwards in the number of Americans who hold unfavorable views of Israel, from 53 percent last year to 60 percent this year. This isn't just among Democrats -- younger Republicans are also pretty disillusioned with the relationship. The number of Republican voters under 50 holding unfavorable views of Israel jumped from 50 percent last year to 57 percent this year. These trends are likely why Netanyahu is interested in changing the way the aid pipeline works.

Here's how the story begins:

Inside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem last week, U.S. Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Indiana) handed him a short stack of papers that effectively called for the United States to stop providing military aid to Israel for free.

"I like it," the prime minister replied after skimming through the draft House resolution, Stutzman recalled in an interview. "This is the direction I've been wanting to go for a long time."

"We want to stand on our own feet," Netanyahu added during the nearly 45-minute meeting on May 27, which was also attended by Rep. Abraham Hamadeh (R-Arizona).

A week after that meeting in Jerusalem -- and with Netanyahu's support -- Stutzman, a steadfast Israel ally, on Wednesday is introducing a resolution calling for the U.S. to develop a new memorandum of understanding between the two nations that would end the $3.8 billion in annual aid Israel receives from the United States, and instead have the nation fund its own purchases of American weapons. The resolution, and the fact that Netanyahu has written a letter supporting it, have not previously been reported.

The current memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Israel only lasts until 2028, so this could go into effect in a relatively short period of time. But while on the face of it this would seem to be a huge change in the geopolitical dynamic between the two countries, there's a lot of skepticism that it would truly cause any deep changes at all (in the comments to the article, the phrase "bait and switch" features heavily, for instance). In fact, what could be happening here is an effort to make such aid much less obvious and a lot more obfuscated in impenetrable budgetary language. The change may wind up being nothing more than political symbolism instead of a huge change in the American-Israeli alliance.

Josh Paul, a former State Department official who was involved in negotiations on the last U.S.-Israel memorandum of understanding, said Netanyahu recognizes the new American political reality and wants to get ahead of it.

The Israeli prime minister is "reading the room, seeing the very clear direction that American politics are going and asking how can Israel maintain the military-to-military relationship and the security cooperation relationship, but do so in a way that is sheltered from American politics -- whether that's Congress, or American public sentiment writ large," Paul said.

In other words, what Netanyahu may be most interested in is avoiding military aid to Israel being so prominent a political football when drawing up yearly U.S. budgets -- since a change in who controls Congress or the White House could cut it off in the near future. Instead, aid to Israel may be buried deep within the massive Pentagon budget, where it would get far less scrutiny:

While the specifics of any such arrangement remains under discussion by the Trump administration's national security officials, Israel would likely benefit from U.S. support through other means, such as a provision currently being considered in the National Defense Authorization Act that would deepen cooperation between the two militaries regarding weapons production and technology systems.

The article offers no specifics for what that last sentence actually means.

Direct, no-strings-attached military aid to Israel isn't the only help they get from America, and money is fungible. So an increase in non-military aid would allow Israel to "use their own money" to purchase weapons from the U.S. without it affecting their overall budget at all (to state just the most obvious way this could all be nothing more than a political dodge by Netanyahu). American politicians could brag to the increasingly-skeptical (if not hostile) American public that they had "ended direct military aid to Israel -- no more free ride!" while simultaneously assuring that nothing much would actually change, when it got down to the dollars-and-cents reality of the situation.

Perhaps this is an overly pessimistic viewpoint. As stated, on the face of it, this would indeed be a rather large change in the relationship between the two countries. As support for Israel becomes more and more potent an issue in American politics (on both sides of the political aisle), perhaps this could be a way for us to put some distance between the two countries, and impose some sort of controls on any money we do offer them as foreign aid. If that turns out to be true, then this would indeed be a big change from the way things have been all the way back to Israel's founding over 75 years ago. Aid to Israel has continued during both Democratic and Republican administrations, no matter which side has been in charge of Congress at the time. But it is increasingly looking like that dynamic could undergo a rather large shift in the next few years, especially if Netanyahu remains in control of Israel.

So this could wind up being a historic step for America to take. Skepticism is justified, and close attention must be paid to the details of how other aspects of American aid and support for Israel might shift in response (beginning with that still-under-discussion N.D.A.A. bill).

Support for Israel already was a big issue in the 2024 presidential elections, on the Democratic side. It looks like it will be a pretty big issue for both parties in the midterms as well, because neither Democrats nor Republicans are united on the issue (far from it -- it is one of the most contentious debates currently happening within both parties, in fact). And it could loom large in the 2028 elections as well, depending on where things stand in the Middle East at the time (what wars are still being waged, how high tensions have gotten, etc.). Netanyahu may just be trying to get ahead of all of this by de-emphasizing the issue of direct (no-strings-attached, free-ride) military aid. It will be interesting to see how this all ends -- whether it truly will be an end to military aid to Israel, or whether it turns out to be nothing more than a symbolic gesture (with the aid simply morphing into other less-visible forms).

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant