Senate Republicans have blocked an effort to force the Trump administration to provide Congress with answers about nine Americans killed in the occupied West Bank and alleged abuses involving Palestinians in Israeli military detention.
The Senate rejected a motion to discharge S.Res. 852 from the Foreign Relations Committee in a 47–51 vote on Tuesday, 29 September, preventing the measure from advancing.
The vote largely followed party lines, with Kentucky Republican Rand Paul joining Democrats in supporting the resolution and Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman the only Democrat to oppose it. Two Republican senators did not vote.
Resolution Sought Answers on Nine American Deaths
Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen introduced the resolution under Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, a provision allowing Congress to seek information about the human rights practices of countries receiving US security assistance.
If adopted, the resolution would have required the State Department to provide Congress within 30 days with an unclassified statement detailing what US officials know about the deaths and the status of investigations by American and Israeli authorities.
The measure identifies nine US citizens killed in the West Bank since January 2022: Omar Assad, Shireen Abu Akleh, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, Mohammad Khdour, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, Amer Rabee, Sayfollah Kamel Musallet, Khamis Ayyad and Nasrallah Abu Siyam.
Among them was Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist who was shot in the head and killed while covering an Israeli military operation near Jenin in May 2022.
A US review later concluded that gunfire from an Israeli military position was likely responsible for her death, while saying investigators could not definitively determine the source of the bullet and had found no reason to believe she was deliberately targeted.
The resolution also cited Eygi, a 26-year-old American killed during a protest in September 2024. The Israeli military later said it was highly likely that she had been struck indirectly and unintentionally by Israeli fire.
Musallet, a 20-year-old American from Florida, was killed during violence involving Israeli settlers in July 2025. The resolution states that he was beaten to death by settlers, although no criminal conviction has established responsibility for his killing.
Palestinian-American Detainees Also Raised
The proposed State Department statement would also have examined the treatment of US citizens held in Israeli prisons and Palestinian children prosecuted through Israel's military court system. It cited the case of Mohammed Ibrahim, a 16-year-old American from Florida who was arrested in February 2025 and spent nine months in pre-trial detention.
The resolution says US embassy officials and lawyers who met Ibrahim told his family that he had lost nearly a quarter of his body weight, contracted scabies and had been beaten and tortured while detained.
The measure also named Palestinian-American detainees Sama Safi and Adam Wajeh Abdelfattah Karakrah and sought information about the conditions under which US citizens were being held. It further cited the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, which has documented deaths and widespread allegations of abuse involving Palestinian detainees following the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023.
Resolution Points to Surge in Settler Violence
The resolution placed the deaths of the American citizens within a broader rise in violence across the occupied West Bank. Citing United Nations figures, it said there were 1,828 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians during 2025 that resulted in casualties or property damage.
The resolution also cited Israeli rights organisation Yesh Din, stating that more than 93% of 1,685 police investigations into settler violence ended without an indictment and that only around 3% resulted in full or partial convictions.
Yesh Din's own latest published figures similarly put the proportion of monitored cases closed without an indictment at 93.6%, with around 3% resulting in full or partial convictions. The resolution further states that there have been no convictions for the deaths of Palestinian civilians killed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank since 2020.
Republicans Oppose Push for State Department Answers
Van Hollen argued that Washington had failed to secure accountability for Americans killed in the West Bank and stressed that the measure sought information rather than an immediate suspension of US assistance to Israel.
Republicans opposing the resolution argued that it unfairly targeted Israel while the country was facing wider regional security threats. Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines urged colleagues to reject the measure, arguing that the United States should stand with Israel amid its confrontation with Iran and Iranian-backed groups.
After the vote, Van Hollen pointed to the 47 senators who supported the resolution as evidence of growing congressional backing for efforts to obtain greater accountability over the deaths and alleged human rights abuses.
The failed vote leaves S.Res. 852 in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, meaning the State Department is not required under the resolution to produce the requested 30-day statement on the deaths, detention conditions and wider human rights concerns raised by its sponsors.
