Trump to end aid to Israel? Don't bet on it: the empire doesn't abandon its outposts

According to Al Jazeera, US President Donald Trump says he wants to end, by the end of the year, the annual envelope of 3.8 billion dollars in military aid to Israel. The channel notes the scepticism surrounding this statement. The file is thin: we know neither the precise timetable, nor the legal form such a decision would take, nor the reaction in Washington or Tel Aviv beyond what the channel reports. The rest is our reading.

First question: cui bono? Not the Palestinians of Gaza, whose deaths and suffering cannot be reduced to a budget line and should not serve as currency in a quarrel between allies. To announce is not to cut. A sentence is not a suspended transfer.

Let us be schematic. US military aid is not an act of kindness. It is an instrument of the state. It binds an ally, finances orders, largely with the American arms industry, and maintains a foothold in a region of energy and commercial stakes. Financial capital seeks outlets and spheres of influence; military alliances and arms contracts are its political shell. Stripping away that shell without putting anything in its place means handing the ground to rivals.

Hence the doubt. A head of state who threatens to suspend aid is also bargaining: pressing a partner, extracting concessions, pleasing a domestic audience. He knows the exchange value of such a threat. Until we see a text, a vote in Congress, or an amended budget line, we have a publicity stunt.

Second point: the American state is not one man. Lenin reminded us that the state is an apparatus serving a ruling class, with its administrations, its committees, its industrial lobbies. The 3.8 billion rests on a multi-year framework negotiated in advance, not on a morning's mood. The president may thunder; the machine has its inertia and its interests. Arms manufacturers do not live on declarations, but on orders.

Third point: even a genuine rupture would not mean a pacifist turn. It could take other channels: direct sales, technological cooperation, diplomatic guarantees. You change the plumbing, not the house. The rivalry between great powers for spheres of influence in the Middle East does not vanish because an accounting line disappears.

We will no doubt be sold this announcement as a moral turning point or as a betrayal. Neither is demonstrated. What to watch: who signs, who delivers, who collects. As long as these three answers have not changed, caution is warranted. The "rules-based order" is well used to such thunderous announcements, followed by a long budgetary silence.