US Senate blocks resolution seeking report on Americans killed in West Bank 

The United States 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 on Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children in military detention.

The resolution failed 47-53 on Tuesday, with senators voting largely along party lines.

It was brought to the floor by Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, and cited a “lack of accountability” from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an “inability to secure justice” from the US government.

Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote against advancing the resolution, while Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from 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 a formal State Department report on the human rights practices of any country that receives US security assistance.

“Violence is raging in the West Bank, & despite the deaths of nine Americans, the wrongful detention of even more, & the daily torment of Palestinians, we have no accountability from the U.S. or Israeli govt”, Van Hollen wrote on X before the resolution was brought to a vote.

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

The measure cited the deaths of nine American 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.

It 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, who was 14; Tawfic Abdel Jabbar and Mohamed Ahmad Alkhdour, both 17; Omar Assad; Khamid Ayyad; Nasrallah Abu Siyam; and Khamis Rabee Jabara.

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

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

Other Palestinian Americans who remain in custody include Adam Wajeh Abdelfattah Karakrah, 16, and Sama Safi, 20, a student detained in June in raids targeting students at Birzeit University.

The resolution cited rights groups that have documented the deaths of at least 44 Palestinians in Israeli military camps since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. Those groups, it said, have documented widespread abuses, including beatings, sexual violence, harassment and threats, “pointing to systemic and deliberate mistreatment”.

It also went on to note a sharp escalation in Israeli settler pogroms in the occupied West Bank, and stressed that there have been no convictions for the killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli settlers since 2020.