S.Res.852 - A resolution requesting information on Israel's human rights practices pursuant to section 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
S.Res.852 was introduced on September 14, 2026, by Senator Van Hollen (D-MD). It is currently pending before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. It was introduced with 21 cosponsors on a partyline basis.
Related legislation: H.Con.Res. 108, S.Res 797
Bill Summary: Pursuant to Sec. 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2304(c)), S.Res.852 requests that the Secretary of State submit to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee a statement on Israel's human rights practices in the West Bank since Jan 1, 2022. The statement must include: the “all credible information the Department of State is aware of concerning the killing of U.S citizens by the IDF, Israeli security forces, or Israeli settlers:” including the killings of Omar Assad, Shireen Abu Akleh, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, Mohammad Khdour, Aysenur Ezgi Egyi, Amer Rabee, Khamis Ayyada, Saifullah Kamel Musallet, and Nasrallah Muhammad Jamal Abu Siyam; an assessment of those killings, status of U.S. and Israeli investigations, evidence and information regarding suspects, and the declassification of any prior assessments. A report on American Citizens detained in Israeli prisons, and an assessment on the human rights situation of children in military detention and how Israel's juvenile detention standards compare to U.S. federal standards; steps the U.S. has taken to promote the human rights of U.S. citizens and Palestinian children and any relevant information of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights in the West Bank.
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.
Context: Israel's occupation of the West Bank has led to the killing of at least nine American citizens since January 2022 alongside 1,244 Palestinians - including 268 children from 2023 to the end of 2025. These killings have occurred alongside escalating settler violence seeking to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. That violence recently included a siege by Israeli settlers of the home of American citizen Loui Ridi, who raised an American flag in an attempt to protect it; the IDF then joined the besieging settlers for prayers. During the same period, a large group of settlers stormed homes in Sa'ir, killing a young Palestinian man and shooting a 70-year-old man, and set fire to a home; settlers separately started a fire in Hebron. These examples are a microcosm of settlers in the West Bank.
The conditions facing Palestinians in Israeli detention are deteriorating in parallel. Administrative detentions have risen sharply, from 791 in 2022 to 3,307 in 2023, 3,327 in 2024, and 3,329 in 2025. Among those held are Palestinian children prosecuted each year in Israeli military courts, without adequate access to counsel and subjected to mistreatment. The United Nations has reported that, "torture has become integral to the domination of and punishment inflicted on men, women and children, both through custodial abuse and through a relentless campaign of forced displacement, mass killings, deprivation and destruction of all means of life to inflict long-term collective pain and suffering. A continuous, territorially pervasive regime of psychological terror is being imposed, designed to break bodies, deprive a people of their dignity and force them from their land."
American Values Analysis: S.Res.852 encourages transparency on the use of U.S. funding in facilitating grave abuses of human rights and violations of international law. The U.S. should strive to be a global leader in the promotion of our values. This legislation furthers those goals by aspiring to hold both this country and its partner, Israel, to those standards.
American Interest Analysis: Israel's occupation of the West Bank is one of the most significant obstacles to regional peace. Continued Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights and self-determination, including the destruction of civilian infrastructure and Israeli officials' open contemplation of annexation and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, give non-state actors and adversaries the propaganda and the political power to grow. SS.Res.852 is consistent with American values as the longer the United States remains associated with an occupation that seeks to ethnically cleanse the West Bank the harder it becomes for American diplomats to credibly advance any of the values the United States claims to represent anywhere else in the world.
A New Policy’s Recommendation: SUPPORT
A New Policy S.Res.852 as it invokes a privileged legislative mechanism to compel executive-branch disclosure of how American citizens have been killed by Israeli security forces and settlers, along with an accounting of the human rights of Palestinian children in Israeli detention facilities and of the steps the State Department has taken to ensure compliance with American law.
For more information please contact Josh Paul, info@anewpolicy.org, (202) 770-0055
