US Senate blocks resolution calling for report on Americans killed in West Bank | Israeli-Palestinian conflict News

The resolution cites a “lack of accountability” on the part of the Israeli government and a “failure to ensure justice” on the part of the United States.

The US Senate has blocked a resolution that would have required President Donald Trump’s administration to report on the killing of nine Americans in the occupied West Bank and Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children in military custody.

The resolution failed Tuesday by a vote of 47 to 53, with senators voting largely along party lines.

It was introduced by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, and cited a “lack of accountability” on the part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and a “failure to achieve justice” on the part of the U.S. government.

Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote against advancing the resolution, while Sen. Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, joined Democrats in supporting it.

Van Hollen forced the vote under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which allows individual members of Congress to demand an official State Department report on the human rights practices of any country receiving U.S. security assistance.

In a social media post after the vote, Van Hollen pledged to continue pushing for justice.

“Tonight, 47 senators supported my resolution to seek accountability for the 9 Americans killed in the West Bank and for Palestinians facing daily injustices. This is more support than we have ever had in this fight,” he wrote on X.

“The Republicans have blocked us, but we won’t stop until justice is served.”

Nine Americans killed

The resolution called for an unclassified report within 30 days of its adoption. It would have detailed investigations into the deaths of Americans, the treatment of American citizens held in Israeli prisons and the conditions faced by Palestinian children detained by the Israeli military.

The measure documents the deaths of nine U.S. citizens in the occupied West Bank since January 2022, including Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist and Al Jazeera correspondent, who was shot in the head and killed in May 2022 while reporting in the city of Jenin.

They also included Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot in the head and killed by an Israeli soldier in September 2024, and Sayfollah Kamel Musallet, who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in July 2025.

The others were Amer Mohammad Saada Rabee, 14; Tawfic Abdel Jabbar and Mohamed Ahmad Alkhdour, both aged 17; Omar Assad; Khamid Ayyad; Nasrallah Abou Siyam; and Khamis Rabee Jabara.

The resolution also noted the arrest of several Palestinian-American children by Israeli forces.

Among them was Mohammed Ibrahim, a 16-year-old from Florida, arrested in February 2025 and held in pretrial detention for nine months without contact with his family. He noted that U.S. embassy officials and lawyers who met with him told his family that he had lost nearly a quarter of his weight, contracted scabies and had been beaten and tortured.

Other Palestinian Americans still in detention include Adam Wajeh Abdelfattah Karakrah, 16, and Sama Safi, 20, a student arrested in June during raids targeting students at Birzeit University.

The resolution cites rights groups that have documented the deaths of at least 44 Palestinians in Israeli military camps since attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023. These groups, it says, have documented widespread abuses, including beatings, sexual violence, harassment and threats, “highlighting systemic and deliberate mistreatment.”

He also noted a sharp escalation of Israeli settler pogroms in the occupied West Bank and stressed that no convictions had been handed down for the killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli settlers since 2020.