On September 8, 2026, the foreign ministers of eleven U.S. allies - Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, as well as Ireland, announced their intention to restrict trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, citing unprecedented settler violence, settlement expansion, and the Israeli government's decision to publish tenders for the E1 project. That decision reflects openly declared policy. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said the Palestinian state is being erased from the table "not with slogans, but with actions," and E1 was advanced to sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and foreclose Palestinian statehood. Roughly 750,000 Israelis now live in at least 148 settlements in the occupied West Bank and 15 in occupied East Jerusalem, all planned, funded, and built with direct government approval under Israeli law. Rejection of Palestinian statehood is not confined to the current governing coalition: Gadi Eisenkot, a leading contender in the coming election, has called anyone still thinking about two states after October 7 "simply delusional," and opposes annexation only because absorbing the West Bank's Palestinian population would end Israel's Jewish majority. The Act responds to this trajectory proactively, sanctioning construction that occurs on or after September 30, 2026 including any expansion of current settlements. E1 is the single exception, in that it would be liable to sanctions regardless of when construction occurs. The Act's inclusion of Gaza, where no Israeli settlements currently exist, anticipates the growing movement within Israeli politics to rebuild and expand them.

For decades, administrations of both parties treated construction in E1 as unacceptable because it forecloses the two-state solution. That policy depended entirely on executive discretion, and it has collapsed. In January 2025 the Trump administration revoked Executive Order 14115, the only U.S. sanctions program addressing threats to West Bank stability. Within months, Israel funded the Sovereignty Road and approved E1. S. 5476 begins to restore U.S. leverage. Its mandatory sanctions reach the bidders, guarantors, contractors, and banks the E1 tender depends on, as well as infrastructure, including roads, built with the purpose or effect of facilitating settlements

S. 4443 and H.R. 3307 should be thought of as an expanded version of the Abraham Accords. It cites the Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2022 in its findings to "expand and strengthen the Abraham Accords to encourage other nations to normalize relations with Israel." The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor is not a new concept; it was initially introduced at the September 2023 G20 Summit to create new trade routes linking India through the Middle East to the Mediterranean and Europe to counter the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. While S. 4443 and H.R. 3307 do not explicitly focus on construction of those routes, it is built on the same concept and ideas that pre-date Israel's genocide in Gaza, accelerated settler violence in the West Bank, and wars in Lebanon and Iran. S. 4443 and H.R. 3307 create incentives and political cover for integration of other states into bilateral agreements between the U.S. and Israel while making no effort to resolve the underlying tensions that Israel's behavior has created.

S.Res.852 is a privileged Resolution, meaning that it can be brought to the Senate floor for a vote 10 days after introduction. The Resolution would require the Administration to provide a report to Congress on the matters it directs. Subsequent to that report, Congress would have the opportunity to vote on a new Joint Resolution proposing any changes to security assistance. Should the Administration choose not to provide the report required under this Resolution within 30 days a full cut-off of assistance, including arms transfers would be automatically triggered.

In the past three years alone, the U.S. has given Israel over 90 thousand tons of arms and equipment to use, without conditions, in its destruction of Gaza. There have been repeated reports of the American-made weapons involved in attacks on civilians, including Joint Direct Attack Munitions to strike civilian homes, 2,000 pound bombs in deadly proximity to hospitals, and high precision bombs to strike a UN-run school and targets in safe zones. These atrocities have garnered global outrage against not only Israel but the United States, which has made itself complicit through the continued sale of weapons despite widespread and credible reports of Israel’s targeting of civilians, impeding humanitarian aid, and other human rights violations. It is the United States’ responsibility to ensure that U.S. made, sold, and transferred weapons are not used to inflict violence on civilians, violate human rights, and impede humanitarian law, in Palestine and globally.

The Israeli government has spent more than $1 billion on public diplomacy since October 2023, including over $100 million disclosed under FARA, and is on track to become the single largest FARA spender in 2026. Seventeen new firms registered to represent Israeli interests in 2024 and 2025. Among them is Bridges Partners LLC, a Washington firm retained by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and paid through Havas Media Group Germany, which budgeted $900,000 between June and November 2025 for an influencer campaign known as the Esther Project. FARA filings show the campaign recruited 14 to 18 influencers to produce 75 to 90 posts through mid-September 2025; reporting based on those filings estimates payments of roughly $7,000 per post once production and administrative costs are subtracted. Not one participating influencer has registered or attached the conspicuous statement FARA requires, and Bridges Partners' own filing identifies a single foreign agent. In November 2025, Public Citizen and the Quincy Institute wrote to the Department of Justice (DOJ) arguing that the influencers are engaged in political activities within the United States on behalf of a foreign government and must register.  That matter is still pending before the DOJ.

H.R. 9893 establishes the ban on American support for UNRWA as law, rendering the demolition of a fundamental pipeline of humanitarian aid to Palestinians throughout the Middle East permanent. In his press release promoting the legislation, the bill’s author “justified” this catastrophe with the unsubstantiated claim that the group is actively engaged in the deliberate spreading of anti-Jewish hatred. Instead, the truth is that UNRWA has repeatedly demonstrated its devotion to a workforce free of antisemitism, and has opened numerous investigations in response to accusations of employee support for terrorism only to find them rooted in reprehensible and damaging lies. By relying on the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism, the bill essentially forbids the Secretary of State from providing financial assistance to any humanitarian organization that speaks critically of Israel. Finally, by mandating that the Secretary certify every individual assistance program, the legislation delays the distribution of essential resources and inherently politicizes funding that, quite literally, saves lives.

Beyond the question of Congressional authorization, the BoP represents a troubling model for the governance and reconstruction of Gaza. Rather than advancing Palestinian self-determination, the structure of the Executive Board itself places Gaza's future under a body lacking Palestinian representation. The charter conditions permanent membership on a $1 billion contribution within the first year, an arrangement that invites states to purchase standing rather than hold a vested interest in the future of Palestinians in Gaza. It contains no meaningful conflict-of-interest rules, auditing requirements, or independent oversight mechanisms, while vesting final authority over budgets, financial accounts, and disbursements in the Chairman and the Executive Board he selects. Rather than add to legitimate international institutions, however flawed, that provide meaningful oversight and global participation, the BoP is set up as a competitor to those institutions while remaining under the purview of a single individual - all checks in his hands, and no balances against them.

H.R. 9680 would direct the State Department to develop and implement a strategy to entirely dismantle UNRWA and transfer its responsibilities to host governments or unspecified international and nongovernmental organizations. The bill identifies no entity with the infrastructure or capacity to assume UNRWA's responsibilities, including operating schools and health clinics, maintaining refugee registration, and delivering essential services to nearly six million refugees across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. At a time when Gaza faces catastrophic humanitarian conditions and Palestinians across the occupied territories confront widespread displacement, hunger, and collapsing civilian infrastructure, eliminating the largest humanitarian provider serving Palestinian refugees would jeopardize life-saving assistance. Rather than reforming humanitarian aid, the bill eliminates the only international agency with a dedicated mandate to serve Palestinian refugees, fragmenting a system that has operated for more than seven decades. 

A New Policy opposes the amendment as it is a cosmetic change to section 219 and bad faith politics, and A New Policy is urging Members to OPPOSE the Luna Amendment on that basis. Had the Majority wished to have a real debate on this issue, they could have advanced the Massie-Khanna Amendment to strike Sec. 219 entirely. The fact they did not tells you everything you need to know about this Amendment

The First Amendment is central to American values of freedom and democracy. The great promise of the United States is that it offers the people within it freedom: to speak, to think, to study, and to protest, regardless of our elected officials’ opinions. America’s refusal to ban or remove people based on their beliefs or statements separates us from the repressive, undemocratic regimes from which many of our citizens’ ancestors fled. This Bill aligns with American values by affirming that these principles apply equally to everyone in the United States.

Context: H.R. 8476, introduced by Randy Fine, conditions federal funding for local educational agencies and institutions of higher education by creating new investigative and accountability mechanisms, specifically for allegations of antisemitism on campuses.  This Bill adopts the IHRA definition of antisemitism as its governing standard, a definition broad enough to treat criticism of the  Israeli government and its actions against Palestinians as antisemetic speech.

Sec. 622 does not just aim to increase Israel’s access to U.S. intelligence and intelligence-gathering mechanisms; it also uses the United States’ intelligence as bait to incentivize other nations to normalize relations with Israel by promising American resources and support to foreign countries who do. Even worse, Sec. 622 makes it incredibly difficult for America to limit or restrict Israeli access to information that is classified and compartmentalized at the highest levels of sensitivity.

H.Con.Res. 108 directs the President to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities in Lebanon within a week of the resolution’s adoption. It is rooted in H.Con.Res. 84, which was introduced in the House by Congresswoman Tlaib on April 13th, 2026. Differing from H.Con.Res 84, which demanded the President remove U.S. Armed Forces from Lebanon, H.Con.Res 108 specifies that personnel be required to leave hostilities in the country. It also includes two new provisions: Section 2, which states that no component of the Resolution can be interpreted as restricting American collaboration with the Lebanese Armed Forces on security matters and issues impacting the safety of diplomatic presences; and Section 3, which establishes that no element of H.Con.Res. 108 should be taken as permitting the use of violence by American troops in Lebanon.