Protection from the risk that the tide might turn on them despite their extensive political lobbying? Just taking a guess here but probably not far off.
One of the YouTube "CIA former spies" explained it very well (paraphrasing): "we shared the F-35 with them, but we kept about 10% of the technology to ourselves and sold them a variant. That wasn't enough for them, they ran an espionage operation to get the remaining 10%".
"The designation stems from concerns within the Pentagon that Israel is making a particular effort to surveil top U.S. officials to get information on the Trump administration’s internal deliberations and decision-making on the conflicts in the Middle East, the officials said."
So Israel wants to know what Trump is going to do next.
I mean, they did just start a war with iran as a joint venture with trump.
I could understand why anyone who starts a joint venture with trump would be nervous about trump selling them out. It is trump after all. Probably is a logical thing to be concerned about.
The well publicized disagreements are just diplomatic cover. The USA can look tough. Israel might back off for a little bit. Everyone looks good for a moment. Reason has prevailed. Then it'll all go back to Israel's criminal "gaza policy" in South Lebanon, continuing the wanton murder of 1000s of civilians under the guise of "they use children as shields". Well yeah, it's endless guerilla warfare and now hezb has drones. Diplomacy is the only way.