New Congress defence bill could turn US Army into 'IDF by proxy'

During a recent conversation, an American friend from New Hampshire — a self-described “political convert” since October 7 - looked over the new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and smirked. “At this rate,” he quipped, “Palestinians will be fighting the US military by proxy.”

What I initially brushed off as political cynicism no longer seemed entirely metaphorical once I looked at the legislation.

Passed by the House of Representatives on 23 July 2026, by a narrow 216–212 vote, the NDAA is the annual legislation that sets the priorities and funding framework for the Department of Defence.

Israel has been the largest recipient of US military assistance for decades, but this year’s NDAA does far more than authorise another round of military assistance to Israel.

Buried within it is Section 219 (originally introduced as Section 224), which establishes a statutory framework for expanding defence technology cooperation beyond traditional military assistance. It creates new mechanisms for joint research, technology development, industrial cooperation, and the integration of jointly developed capabilities.

The bill does not simply authorise aid to an ally; it embeds deeper US-Israel defence technology and industrial cooperation within the statutory framework of the US Department of Defence.

To the friend from New Hampshire, a political psychologist by training, section 219 eerily resembles a vision articulated by PM Benjamin Netanyahu in early June 2026: replacing direct US financial assistance with military fusion. That was enough for him “to smell a rat”.

“The vote legitimises selling out American soul to a foreign power,” he said.

But he is not the only one. Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, described the provision as “a betrayal of American sovereignty” that “merges our military technology and supply chain with Israel’s.” Democratic Representative Ro Khanna joined Massie in seeking to remove the section, arguing that the provision went too far in deepening the US-Israel defence relationship.

Always an exception

Sure, one would posit that Washington forged exceptionally close military partnerships before. For example, during and after World War II, Britain became America's closest strategic ally, sharing nuclear technology, intelligence, and extensive military planning, later formalised through arrangements such as the Five Eyes partnership.

The comparison begins to break down, however, when we know that even the so-called "special relationship" did not embed Britain into the legal architecture of US defence policy in the way this bill seeks to do with Israel.

Nor did the bill emerge in isolation. In January, Netanyahu argued that Israel should phase out its dependence on US military aid within a decade. In practice, the proposal was less about loosening ties with Washington and more about redefining them around deeper technological, industrial, and defence integration.

That trajectory became more explicit in June, when U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee argued that the next US-Israel security agreement should move away from traditional aid and be "based on trade"—recasting a relationship built around $3.8 billion in annual military assistance as one of mutual strategic benefit.

This convergence is unlikely to be coincidental. Here is a theory: what appears on the surface as a deepening strategic alliance may also function as an Israeli “procedural pre-emptive strike.”

Securing Israel’s future

For a state whose strategic worldview is shaped by existential anxiety, pre-emption becomes a cognitive lens through which future risks are interpreted. The instinct, whether articulated or not, is to secure tomorrow's commitments before today's political landscape changes.

In this reading, as support for Israel becomes increasingly contested within American society - largely in response to the Gaza genocide - institutionalising the relationship and entrenching commitments within the US political system could be viewed in Tel Aviv as a way of shielding it from future political reversals. It is, perhaps, an attempt to outrun the rising anti-Israel tide across the United States.

That said, it is within this specific context that the irony of this bill becomes more striking: securing the future of an alliance may deepen the insecurity of those living under its consequences. This is where my friend’s remark about Palestinians “fighting the U.S. military by proxy” struck with unexpected force, even if I didn’t take his interpretation literally.

The consequences of this transformation for Palestinians unfold on two interconnected levels. The first concerns Israel's expanding strategic position; the second, the realities Palestinians may face if that transformation continues.

On the first level, Section 219 may reinforce a long-standing Israeli ambition to position itself as the indispensable security actor in the Middle East. Over the past decade, Israel has steadily projected power beyond its borders - from its campaign against Iran in Syria to its confrontation with Hezbollah, alongside its efforts to build security partnerships with Arab states following the Abraham Accords.

Deeper integration with Washington would, therefore, matter not simply because it enhances Israel's military capabilities, but because it further consolidates Israel's role as a central node in the region's emerging security architecture.

This is where the tech dimension becomes consequential. AI, intelligence-sharing, missile defence, joint research, weapons development, and data fusion are not merely tools of warfare; they shape how threats are identified, decisions are made, and military operations are conducted.

Genocide

Gaza has already demonstrated the centrality of surveillance, intelligence and precision-strike systems in modern Israeli operations. Embedding these capabilities within a deeper US-Israeli framework risks making this model more permanent and harder to challenge.

That possibility leads directly to the second level. For Palestinians, the danger is not only an increasingly unconstrained Israeli military, but a future where the apparatus enabling that power is further insulated from accountability.

When military integration is hardwired into US legislation, future administrations lose the leverage to condition support. During the Gaza genocide, for instance, President Biden occasionally delayed specific bomb shipments - whether to absorb international criticism on Washington complicity in the genocide or to exert tactical pressure on Israel. However rare, such moments relied on executive discretion, leaving a narrow opening where public pressure could still force a moment of friction. But full structural fusion threatens to eliminate even those modest levers of restraint.

It doesn’t stop there. Palestinian human rights are no longer merely selectively or symbolically cited by Washington, but may be entirely coded out of the architecture. Whatever recourse that remains could be replaced by a joint technological machinery structurally immune to political appeal.

This integration is what gives weight to my friend’s whimsical remark about Palestinians “fighting the US military by proxy.” Not because American forces will directly replace Israeli ones, but because the boundary between American support and Israeli military power may become blurred.

All said and done, when my friend thinks of the bill, he sees Israel’s influence in Washington as “parasitic” and fears for his country’s sovereignty. I look beyond who influences whom, focusing instead on how those decisions shape the conditions under which we struggle to secure our future. Deeply political for him, simply existential for us.

Yet we both agree on one - perhaps comforting - thought: history has a habit of resisting those who attempt to fix it in place. Political structures create their own counterforces, alliances generate their own tensions, and attempts to lock down the future often produce consequences their architects never anticipated.

He calls this dynamic “history’s logic”, I - like most Palestinians - think of it as simply “resilience”. We’ve been there before. We will adapt.

Dr Emad Moussa is a Palestinian-British researcher and writer specialising in the political psychology of intergroup and conflict dynamics, focusing on MENA with a special interest in Israel/Palestine. He has a background in human rights and journalism, and is currently a frequent contributor to multiple academic and media outlets, in addition to being a consultant for a US-based think tank.

Follow him on Twitter: @emadmoussa

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.