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AIPAC Lobbies Against a Bill to Ensure Israel Complies With the Ceasefire
Pro-Palestine groups argue the ‘Ceasefire Compliance Act’ is too modest in its effort to get Israel to stop killing Palestinians. AIPAC, meanwhile, hates it.
READ IN APP The 2019 AIPAC policy conference in Washington, DC, on March 26, 2019. Photo by Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is lobbying against modest legislation meant to ensure Israel complies with the supposed Gaza “ceasefire” deal it keeps violating, according to correspondence obtained by Zeteo.
Moderate Democratic Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) is leading the bill, called the Ceasefire Compliance Act, which was released Monday. The legislation aims to stop Israel from violating the Gaza ceasefire deal, negotiated by Donald Trump. Israel has already allegedly violated the deal hundreds and hundreds of times.
Some pro-Palestine groups and lawmakers, meanwhile, argue the bill would not actually stop Israel from continuing to kill Palestinians in Gaza – and that it’s a distraction from other measures that would cut off the transfer of heavy weapons to Israel, which is internationally accused of committing genocide.
The Ceasefire Compliance Act would direct the US government to conduct reports every 90 days to ensure that the Israeli government is complying with the ceasefire deal, is not inhibiting aid into Gaza, does not annex more territory in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and is taking steps to stop settler violence there. If the US finds Israel to be violating any of the conditions, the bill would stop the sale or transfer of US weapons to Israel for use in the West Bank or Gaza – and stipulates that weapons previously transferred to Israel couldn’t be used in Gaza or the West Bank, either.
“The legislation aligns US policy with American values and interests, reduces civilian harm, supports humanitarian access, and makes a durable regional peace more likely by promoting dignity and security for Israelis and Palestinians,” Casten tells Zeteo in a statement.
The bill offers some exceptions.
It allows the president to waive the prohibition of weapons transfers to Israel if they determine that it is vital to “national security” of the US. The legislation also does not prevent the US from sending Israel defensive military aid, and other aid such as intelligence gathering and sharing.
Progressive lawmakers and pro-Palestine advocates find the bill to be too deferential to the vehemently pro-Israel Trump administration, and worry it might undercut the momentum of more aggressive measures to rein in Israel, like the Block the Bombs Act.
Casten’s colleague, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), who introduced Block the Bombs, is among the members critical of the bill. “I continue to encourage my colleagues to join Block the Bombs. The Ceasefire Compliance Act is not the bill we need: There is no ceasefire in Gaza; the legislation endorses Trump’s plan to take over Gaza and empowers him with a waiver; the existing end use restrictions have proven ineffective, and by the bill's own standard, based on all that has transpired, a weapons embargo would already be justified,” Ramirez tells Zeteo in a statement. “Lastly, the biggest shortcoming of the legislation is that it was drafted without the voices of Palestinians, once again silencing those affected by the genocide and displacement. We must continue to maintain focus on Block the Bombs.”
Nevertheless, AIPAC is pushing back against the Ceasefire Compliance Act, and urging lawmakers to oppose it.
In correspondence reviewed by Zeteo, AIPAC has argued the bill wrongly focuses only on Israel and ignores Hamas; that it fails to recognize Israel’s “legitimate use” of US weapons for security; and that it distorts the conditions in Gaza, where Israel has killed tens of thousands of people, and potentially hundreds of thousands, since Oct. 7, 2023.
The bill mentions how Israel’s military operations led to famine in “parts” of Gaza. AIPAC argues this fails to give Israel credit for how much aid it’s letting into Gaza. AIPAC describes the “charge” of famine as “an intentional, reckless, and unhelpful mischaracterization of the challenging humanitarian situation there.”
Several international humanitarian bodies – including the United Nations-backed body that monitors food crises worldwide – declared famine conditions in Gaza.
No Daylight
AIPAC’s opposition to the bill is striking, for one, because the pro-Israel lobbying group is functionally staking out the position that they are opposed to ensuring Israel complies with the ceasefire deal. If the group was confident that Israel was complying with the ceasefire, there would be no risk of the US government – no less one led by the vehemently pro-Israel Trump-Vance administration – blocking any aid to Israel.
As with the group’s apparently blunderous attacks on otherwise pro-Israel Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski in a recent New Jersey primary election – leading to the victory of pro-Palestine Democrat Analilia Mejia – AIPAC seems to be demanding no daylight at all between US policy and Israel’s interests.
While AIPAC opposes the legislation, the Ceasefire Compliance Act has support from the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group J Street.
“We welcome the growing number of members of Congress who are willing to go on the record in support of policies that condition arms to Israel to incentivize compliance with the ceasefire and US law,” J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami tells Zeteo in a statement. “The Ceasefire Compliance Act builds upon years of J Street’s advocacy calling the ‘blank check’ approach into question, beginning with our 2019 Conference, in which J Street pressed presidential candidates to publicly commit to restricting US aid to Israel so it could not be used to annex the West Bank.”
J Street has not endorsed Block the Bombs, but Ben-Ami says this measure and the Ceasefire Compliance Act are “aligned in the overall effort to ensure accountability and oversight.”
The bill was released with the following co-sponsors: Democratic Reps. Becca Balint, Don Beyer, Troy Carter, Joaquin Castro, Madeleine Dean, Chris Deluzio, Lloyd Doggett, Veronica Escobar, Valerie Foushee, John Garamendi, Sylvia Garcia, Jared Huffman, Marcy Kaptur, Ro Khanna, Doris Matsui, Betty McCollum, Jim McGovern, Chellie Pingree, Emily Randall, Jan Schakowsky, Mark Takano, Mike Thompson, Jill Tokuda, Derek Tran, and Bonnie Watson Coleman.
But some in the pro-Palestine and anti-war camps oppose the measure according to three sources familiar with the matter – arguing that, while they appreciate the effort, they find the bill to be insufficient, and believe it’s misguided to entrust the Trump administration to enforce any of its relatively smaller directives.
They point to several aspects as cause for concern. The waiver mechanism, they say, would readily allow the Trump administration to continue sending weapons to Israel even if it keeps bombing Gaza, blocking aid, or annexing land in the West Bank.
The bill’s requirements to report on Israel’s behavior, they argue, is redundant given the glut of information from Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights organizations clearly reporting on Israel’s wanton violence. They add that relying on Trump – who has openly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and has repeatedly circumvented Congress to send billions of dollars of weapons to Israel – is a fool’s errand. The reporting requirements also echo previous guardrails that the Biden-Harris administration openly flouted to continue the flow of weapons to Israel (so much so that former Secretary of State Antony Blinken misled Congress to keep the weapons moving). Existing US laws, meanwhile, such as the Arms Export Control Act or the Foreign Assistance Act, theoretically should already block the US from transferring weapons to Israel.
Critics also view the bill seeking to keep Israel in compliance with Trump’s ceasefire plan as giving Trump’s plan itself too much credit – given he has failed to hold Israel accountable for any of its existing violations and given the corporatized, imperialist make-up of his “Board of Peace,” which is supposedly overseeing reconstruction of Gaza, managing “security,” and coordinating aid into Gaza.
Pro-Palestine and anti-war groups also see the bill as undermining momentum for existing bills, including the Block the Bombs Act (which has 62 backers and counting in the House) and the Gaza Genocide Recognition Resolution.
A poll last year found US voters saying Israel was committing genocide by a 15-point margin. Democrats said so at a 66-point margin. Repeated pollshave shown widespread support for cutting US military aid to Israel.
Last year, even before an United Nations independent commission officially announced that Israel was committing genocide, more than half the Senate Democratic caucus voted to end certain weapon sales to Israel.
Israeli Violence Continues
As AIPAC mounts its fight to ensure Israel does not have to comply with the ceasefire, Israel continues to violate the agreement. Israeli forces have killed at least 600 people and injured 1,600 since the ceasefire took effect in October.
Israeli government-sanctioned terroristic settler violence in the West Bank continues to rage – with settlers even harassing a US Democratic candidate who was recently visiting. Just this week, Israeli settlers killed yet another young Palestinian-American – marking at least eight Americans killed by Israeli violence in the past two-and-a-half years.
And still, no Republican has signed onto any current legislation to stop the unlimited flow of weapons to Israel.
Meanwhile, a majority of the Democratic caucus has yet to sign on to bills like Block the Bombs – which, in actuality, is not even that radical of a proposition, given Israel has committed genocide. The bill would not block the transfer of all weapons to Israel, just certain bombs, tank artillery, and munitions such as white phosphorus.
On Sunday, AIPAC boasted that it’s the “top fundraiser” for various Democratic members of the Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, and the Equality Caucus.
These donations, for now, still seem to be paying off.
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