Washington, DC – Palestinian Americans have held a day of advocacy at the United States Capitol under the spectre of a new $2.8bn arms transfer to Israel reportedly approved by the administration of US President Donald Trump. The Americans for Justice in Palestine Action (AJP Action) group, which organised Tuesday’s event, said more than 300 constituents from across the country met with the offices of more than 100 US lawmakers. They advocated on behalf of a slate of legislative initiatives related to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, surging Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank, and efforts to use immigration law to stifle Palestinian advocacy in the US.
Jenna Escheik, a 19-year-old meeting with lawmakers and staffers from Virginia, including Democratic Senator Tim Kaine and Republican Representative Rob Wittman, said she was planning to speak with “some very challenging and interesting people”. Yaseen Shaikh, a 22-year-old who travelled with a delegation from Cleveland, Ohio, said he will be meeting with the offices of Republican Senator Jon Husted, who faces a competitive midterm race against former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, as well as the state’s other Republican Senator, Bernie Moreno. Both Republican senators have consistently voted against legislative efforts to limit arms sales to Israel.
Successive presidential administrations, as well as Congress, have for decades resisted calls to condition US military aid to Israel, including throughout Israel’s latest war in Gaza, which will reach its three-year mark early next month. To date, nearly 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, with nearly 1,400 killed since a “ceasefire” agreement went into effect in October 2025. Last week, US media widely reported the Trump administration approved a US taxpayer-funded $2.8bn military package to Israel, which included 907kg (2,000-pound) MK-84 bombs known to have already caused widespread civilian devastation in the Palestinian enclave.
The package reportedly included 20,000 of those munitions, as well as 20,000 BLU-117s, a close variant. Several Democrats have vowed to block the transfer, with the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Gregory Meeks, using his leverage last week to at least slow congressional clearance. Osama Abu Irshaid, AJP Action’s executive director, said the new weapons package runs counter to public opinion polls, which have regularly found majority support for conditioning at least some weapons to Israel, as well as surging support for Palestinian rights.
Abu Irshaid said the polls underscore a new political reality for lawmakers. While entrenched support for arming Israel has persisted among some segments of the Democratic Party, advocates have hailed what they see as a historic shift in recent months. In July of last year, 26 Democrats in the Senate voted to block some arms transfers to Israel, the first time in history a majority of Democratic lawmakers in the chamber did so.
In April, similar resolutions gained a record 40 votes in the Senate, all Democrats, but ultimately failed to pass in the 100-member chamber. The so-called Block the Bombs Act in the House, which calls for a partial arms embargo against Israel, reached 81 co-sponsors as of August. Twenty-two Democratic senators also introduced a resolution last week to force the US Department of State to conduct an investigation into the violence committed by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank, in which at least nine US citizens have been killed in recent years.
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