Pro-Israel advocacy groups in the United States are moving away from traditional campaign financing and political lobbying toward a new strategy: embedding Israel’s interests directly into federal law. According to political analyst Mitchell Plitnick, writing in Middle East Eye on June 15, the shift is driven by a measurable collapse in American public support for Israel following the Gaza conflict, the invasion of Lebanon, and years of scrutiny over Israel’s influence on US policymaking. The new approach targets must-pass legislation — bills Congress cannot realistically reject — to institutionalise military, intelligence, and technology ties between the two countries.
The Polling Shift
The strategic change follows a sustained fall in American public opinion toward Israel. A Pew Research Center survey from April 2026 found that negative views of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to rise among Americans, particularly among younger people. That erosion has begun showing up in political campaigns. Candidates running in 2026 midterm races have largely avoided pro-Israel messaging in their platforms, even as foreign policy features more prominently in campaign rhetoric than in previous cycles, according to Plitnick’s analysis in Middle East Eye.
The damage to AIPAC — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, widely considered the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying organisation in the country — has been particularly visible within the Democratic Party. A March 2026 Politico report found that Democratic hopefuls for the 2028 presidential race had begun distancing themselves from AIPAC, reflecting a calculation that association with the group had become a political liability. Several candidates, according to Mondoweiss reporting cited by Plitnick, have attempted awkward reversals on past statements about Israeli policy.
Legislation Over Lobbying
With direct advocacy losing ground, Israel’s allies in Washington are pursuing a different method. Two pieces of legislation currently being drafted would, if passed, make Israel’s security interests a codified legal priority within the US government.
The first is a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual bill that funds the entire US military. According to Al Jazeera, a provision moving through Congress in May 2026 would create an executive agent responsible for integrating Israeli and American defence cooperation across all US government departments, require Israeli technology to be incorporated into major American defence purchases, and vastly expand technology sharing between the two countries.
The second is an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA), which funds US intelligence agencies. As reported by The Independent, the proposed measure would require broad intelligence sharing not only with Israel but with any Arab or Muslim country that joins the Abraham Accords and normalises relations with Israel. Under the draft text, a president would only be permitted to withhold intelligence from Israel if a “specific and identifiable national security concern” exists — and would then be required to justify that decision to Congress.
Because both the NDAA and the IAA are considered must-pass legislation, individual amendments attached to them face far fewer obstacles than standalone bills. They cannot realistically be blocked by opponents without killing the entire defence funding package.
A Legal Baseline Already Exists
This legislative push builds on a foundation laid over previous decades. Congress has already passed law requiring the US president to guarantee Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME) — defined in statute as “the ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties, through the use of superior military means.” That requirement applies regardless of any given administration’s stated foreign policy preferences.
The QME law illustrates how binding these structural ties already are. The new measures, if enacted, would extend that principle into intelligence and technology, making it harder for future administrations to reduce cooperation with Israel even if they sought to do so. Plitnick argues that the cumulative effect would be a US-Israel relationship with “layers of legal and structural obstacles” protecting it from shifts in public opinion or electoral results.
Bypassing Congress on Weapons
The third element of the strategy involves restructuring how weapons and military technology flow from the United States to Israel — in a way that reduces Congressional oversight.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly stated that Israel should reduce its dependence on direct American government aid. A Washington Post report from June 3, 2026 found that some Republicans were pushing for Israel to pay for American weapons through expanded public-private partnerships, with Netanyahu’s blessing. The model would redirect funding toward American defence companies rather than to Israel directly, framing the arrangement as an investment in US manufacturing and jobs.
The Institute for Middle East Understanding has argued that rather than deepening the US-Israeli military partnership through joint weapons projects, the United States should be fulfilling its obligations under domestic and international law to restrict assistance to Israel given documented human rights violations. The institute’s position represents a counter-argument gaining traction among civil society groups, though it has not translated into binding legislative action.
The practical effect of the proposed weapons pipeline, according to Plitnick’s analysis, would be to insulate military aid to Israel from public pressure. Once private-sector partnerships are operating at scale, government support could theoretically be removed without halting the flow of weapons or technology — because the commercial relationships would be self-sustaining.
Why the Timing Matters
The speed of this legislative push is directly tied to political risk. In May 2026, The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump excluded Israel from planning during negotiations aimed at securing a permanent ceasefire with Iran — a significant departure from standard practice. The proposed NDAA measure would, in future, allow Israel to argue that excluding it from joint military planning violates American law, closing off that kind of unilateral presidential decision.
The Abraham Accords intelligence-sharing provision creates a separate incentive structure. Countries that normalise relations with Israel would gain access to US intelligence on defence matters — a reward that advocates hope will accelerate normalisation efforts even as Israel’s standing among Western publics falls.
Background
AIPAC has spent decades funding political campaigns on both sides of the aisle, making it one of the best-resourced lobbying operations in Washington. Its influence expanded significantly in the 1980s and 1990s as Congress passed successive laws cementing US military assistance to Israel. The Abraham Accords, signed in 2020, brought the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco into formal relations with Israel, creating a new framework for regional normalisation. Since October 2023, Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon have produced sustained international criticism and a documented decline in public support within the United States. The NDAA and IAA are passed annually and are considered essential funding vehicles; failure to pass them would halt US military and intelligence operations.
What Happens Next
Both the NDAA and IAA amendments are currently being drafted for inclusion in their respective bills, with Congress expected to take up the NDAA later in 2026. If passed, the provisions would be legally binding and could only be reversed by new legislation — a significantly higher bar than an executive decision or a shift in administration policy. The Abraham Accords intelligence-sharing measure would come into effect for any new signatories to the accords going forward. Advocacy groups opposed to the measures, including the Institute for Middle East Understanding, have indicated they will push for the amendments to be stripped from both bills before final passage.
