Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., is leading a push to remove provisions from the Senate and House versions of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act that would promote closer ties between the U.S. industrial base and Israel’s.
A letter sent Tuesday to House and Senate leadership signed by Van Hollen and 11 other Senate colleagues, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., specifically addresses Section 1217 of the Senate version and Section 219 of the House version of the bill.
Those sections, called the United States-Israel Defense Cooperation Initiative in the House and the United States-Israel Framework for Upgraded Technologies, Unified Research, and Enhanced Security (FUTURES) Act in the Senate, each call for enhanced cooperation between the two countries on weapons technology development, including in artificial intelligence, quantum technology and chemical and biological weapons.
“The Senator is working with his colleagues to remove these provisions and will determine next steps should they remain in,” Van Hollen’s office said in an email to Military Times. “The Senator will continue to push to remove these provisions and push to protect the United States’ ability to act independently and in line with U.S. national security interests.”
The letter also addresses a provision of the fiscal 2027 Intelligence Authorization Act that proposes enhancing intelligence-sharing between the two countries, which, according to the text of the bill, is intended to help Israel “maintain its qualitative military edge” and “deter and counter destabilizing activities by the Government of Iran and Iran-aligned state and nonstate actors that threaten Israel, United States forces, and regional partners.”
The U.S. government’s support for Israel has come under intense scrutiny over the past three years. Israel’s war in Gaza has killed at least 74,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and U.S. and Israeli attacks against Iran on Feb. 28 led to a war that’s increasingly unpopular in the United States, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
President Donald Trump promised to end outright military aid to Israel, which has previously come via a Memorandum of Understanding. The current MOU is set to expire in 2028 and provides billions in financing for Israel to procure U.S.-made weapons over the 10-year agreement.
Critics, including Van Hollen, have noted that the annual defense bills, as they stand, merely shift military provision from an aid model to a commercial partnership, this time overseen by the Pentagon rather than the State Department.
The new model, as proposed in the draft legislation, “would constrain the administration’s ability to independently determine how best to protect U.S. national security and would lock in long-term commitments despite our serious concerns with the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, the West Bank, and other parts of the region,” the letter states.
The U.S. and Israel already cooperate on some defense technology; Israeli contractor Rafael Systems and Raytheon developed the David’s Sling missile interceptor system. But critics say that the proposed setup would decrease oversight of the weapons transfer system; could compromise sensitive U.S. weapons technology; and wouldn’t provide much benefit for the United States.
The NDAA is one of Congress’s “must-pass” bills, but the price tag alone — more than $1 trillion — has drawn significant pushback from Democrats. The House’s version narrowly passed in July, and Senate Democrats blocked that chamber’s version the same month, objecting to provisions for the Iran war.
In the House, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., tried unsuccessfully to pass an amendment striking the United States-Israel Defense Cooperation Initiative when the bill was being debated in committee. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., was also a vocal opponent.
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