Israel recently denied entry of an American interfaith group of Christians, Jews and Muslims intending to visit the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They were detained and banned from returning for up to 10 years after trying to cross the Sheik Hussein Bridge into Israel from Jordan on Aug. 13. MSN News reported, “Rev. Edward Phillips, a retired Emory University theology professor and United Methodist minister who led the delegation, said the group wanted to visit Taybeh, an all-Christian village in the West Bank…”
It was noted that the Israeli action violates the United States visa waiver program which lets citizens of participating countries travel to each other’s territory without a visa. Phillips speculated that Israel wants to keep Americans and other foreigners from seeing conditions in the occupied territories.
The conditions are dire. For example, Btselem, an Israeli information center for human rights in the occupied territories, reports, “On Friday, at around 3:00 P.M., about 30 settlers escorted by seven soldiers came to the southern side of the village of Madama and attacked houses with stones. When local residents came out to defend their homes, the soldiers fired tear gas canisters and several live rounds at them. The settlers then left the area through village olive groves, breaking three roughly five-year-old olive trees on their way out.”
Common Dreams reports Israeli settlers, who were wearing masks, attacked and wounded a Palestinian woman and four NBC team members who were interviewing her in the West Bank on Saturday, amid ongoing settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territory. Aida Ahmed Abdullah and her family were telling NBC about how settlers forced them from their home in the town of Jalud.
Recently, the New York Times reported that an Israeli lawmaker, Zvi Sukkot, entered the Palestinian village of Madama escorted by Israeli soldiers and smashed a monument with a sledgehammer that bears the names of “people killed by the enemy,” Israel. At least two soldiers stood nearby but did not try to stop him. The provocative act comes amid rising violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, observes, “extremist settlers have carried out at least 1,380 attacks in 250 communities in 2026, according to U.N. data from late July. Those settlers have faced a near-total lack of consequences.”
The Israeli government is now advancing a long-touted plan to build new homes for settlers in a key part of the West Bank, a move condemned this week by European nations, Canada and Australia. Ed Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, said in a post on social media, the publication of the plan was “unacceptable and destructive.” Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, fired back at Mr. Miliband, asserting that “the Jewish people have the right to live throughout the Land of Israel,” an apparent reference to all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
Consistent with this move to build more Israeli settler homes in the occupied Palestinian territory, Israel has also erected new roadblocks across the West Bank, stifling the movement of goods within the territory. In Hebron, the most populous city, the Israeli military has closed five of seven entrances and exits, according to Mayor Yousef Jabari. The military said that only two were regularly open and a third was “intermittently” open based on operational and security considerations.
These conditions have prompted Senator Van Hollen to introduce a resolution that would order the Trump administration to provide Congress with a detailed accounting of Israel’s human rights practices in the West Bank, laying the groundwork to force a vote on the matter in coming weeks. “We’ve seen ongoing human rights violations on the West Bank, but we’re going from bad to abysmal,” Van Hollen said in an interview. The resolution also demands information about Palestinian children held under Israeli military law, including allegations of torture and other mistreatment. The goal of the resolution is to discern how the United States is adhering to human rights laws in its apparent support of the government of Israel’s administration of the Palestinian West Bank.
It is appropriate for Van Hollen to seek to expose the oppression of Palestinians by Israel and by the Israeli settlers in the West Bank. As the information comes out, the U.S. must support Palestinian human rights by withholding military aid to Israel until peace with justice for Palestinians is established and until all U.S. citizens are given the benefit of the visa waiver program between the U.S. and Israel. It is the right thing to do.
John Buttrick writes from his Vermont Folk Rocker in his Concord home, Minds Crossing. He can be reached at johndbuttrick@gmail.com.