Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) and 25 Democratic co-sponsors introduced a bill on Monday that would implement wide-ranging new conditions and restrictions on U.S. aid to Israel.

The Ceasefire Compliance Act would require the administration to assess and report to Congress every 90 days on whether Israel is complying with the October 2025 ceasefire agreement in Gaza, including halting military operations and bombing campaigns.

The legislation does not appear to contain exceptions for the strikes Israel has taken in retaliation for Hamas’ own violations of the ceasefire deal, nor mention its targeting of individual Hamas leaders.

Under the terms of the legislation, if Israel does not meet the conditions included in the law, the U.S. would be banned from selling or transferring any U.S. military systems to Israel for use in Gaza or the West Bank, any further transfers would be subject to a specific agreement by Israel that the weapons would not be used in Gaza or the West Bank and the administration would be required to reach an agreement with Israel that U.S.-origin systems already in Israel’s possession would also be banned from use in Gaza or the West Bank.

Those restrictions would remain in effect until Israel is in compliance with all conditions. The legislation establishes an end-use monitoring group within the administration to monitor whether U.S.-provided systems are in use in Gaza or the West Bank.

The legislation includes language guaranteeing that U.S. defensive assistance to and intelligence sharing with Israel, as well as provision of missile-defense systems to Israel, are exempt from the conditions. The bill would sunset after five years.

Other conditions would require Israel to work to implement President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan; allow humanitarian aid into Gaza; cooperate in the establishment of a temporary Palestinian government and ultimately a Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank; take “material steps” to prevent settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank; and ban any forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, annexation of Gaza or “de facto or de jure annexation” of any part of the West Bank.

The Israeli government, and a broad swath of Israeli society, oppose the establishment of a Palestinian Authority government in Gaza given the group’s ongoing payments to the families of terrorists, among a raft of other concerns.

“As one of the United States’ most important allies, Israel must ensure that its policies and the use of U.S. military assistance align with American values, interests, and the law,” Casten said in a statement. “That starts with requiring compliance with the October 10, 2025, ceasefire agreement and the steps laid out in the 20-point plan, curbing settler violence, and rejecting annexation in the West Bank.”

The legislation includes a limited presidential waiver of the conditions for transfers and sales “vital to the national security of the United States.” The president would be required to provide a detailed justification to Congress 15 days before invoking such a waiver explaining why it is necessary and unavoidable.

“This bill redefines the system of US military aid to Israel, transforming it from a blank check to an accountability-based system that advances US strategic interests in the Middle East, aligns with American values, enhances Israel’s security, and protects Palestinian civilians,” a release by Casten’s office about the bill states. “Through thorough oversight and tough enforcement mechanisms, it makes clear that actions undermining shared U.S. and Israeli interests and values will have consequences.”

The bill is co-sponsored by Reps. Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Veronica Escobar (D-TX), Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Becca Balint (D-VT), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Ro Khanna (D-CA), John Garamendi (D-CA), Don Beyer (D-VA), Jill Tokuda (D-HI), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Valerie Foushee (D-NC), Mike Thompson (D-CA), Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), Doris Matsui (D-CA), Derek Tran (D-CA), Emily Randall (D-WA), Jared Huffman (D-CA), Mark Takano (D-CA), Troy Carter (D-LA), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Betty McCollum (D-MN) and Joaquin Castro (D-TX).

The legislation also includes specific language emphasizing that the administration has no authority to transfer U.S. funds to the Board of Peace — after Trump pledged a $10 billion U.S. commitment last week — or to provide the Board of Peace with authorities that “[supersede] the role or authorities of the United Nations.”

One source familiar with the situation told Jewish Insider that J Street, which is backing the bill alongside New Jewish Narrative and Foreign Policy for America, is making the legislation its top priority. The group is holding a conference in Washington later this month.

“The Ceasefire Compliance Act puts into law the common sense principle that American weapons cannot be used by the Israeli government in Gaza and the West Bank in ways that fundamentally violate American values and directly contravene U.S. interests,” J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said in a statement. “US assistance — whether aid or arms — should never come as a blank check. The CCA will ensure the Israeli government is held to agreements it has signed and abides by the ceasefire, allows a Palestinian governing council to take control of Gaza, and cannot annex the West Bank.”

Though the bill is unlikely to pass Congress under Republican control, it could provide a model for Democrats critical of Israel shy of the terms of the Block the Bombs Act and other efforts to impose a full offensive arms embargo on the Jewish state.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and a handful of progressive Democrats introduced a resolution on Monday referring to Palestinian Arabs as the “indigenous inhabitants” of Israel and endorsing Palestinian right of return, one of the most sensitive issues in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

The resolution seeks to set as U.S. policy recognition of the “Nakba” — the term, translating to “catastrophe,” that Palestinians use to refer to the mass Palestinian exodus that accompanied the foundation of Israel — and accept as a settled issue Palestinian refugees’ right of return to inside Israel’s borders. It also refers to Palestinians as the “indigenous population” of the region, but does not acknowledge Jewish history in the region.

The legislation accuses Israel of having “depopulated more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities” during its 1948 War of Independence and characterizes ongoing Israeli “expropriation of Palestinian land and… dispossession of the Palestinian people,” including Israeli settlements, as part of an ongoing Nakba. In a statement announcing the legislation, Tlaib accused Israel of “ongoing ethnic cleansing.”

Tlaib’s resolution has been cosponsored by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Marie Newman (D-IL), Cori Bush (D-MO) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).

Neither Tlaib nor any of the cosponsors responded to a question from Jewish Insider about whether they viewed Jews as also being “indigenous” to the region.

Newman is currently facing a primary challenger, Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL), who is backed by various pro-Israel groups, including J Street, which had endorsed Newman in 2020. Bowman has faced criticism from the Democratic Socialists of America over his positions on Israel, including voting for supplemental Iron Dome funding and traveling to the Jewish state last year. He has since removed himself as a cosponsor of legislation supporting the Abraham Accords.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) blasted Tlaib’s resolution as “predicated on a demonstrably false historical narrative… predictably failing to mention the hundreds of attacks on Jewish communities in the British mandate of Palestine by Palestinian militias.” 

Sherman noted that the resolution “omits” that Israel was attacked by eight Arab states in 1948, that the 1948 war began with attacks by Arab forces seeking “a war of annihilation” against Jewish militants and civilians, that “not a single Jew was left alive in the portion of the British mandate controlled by Arab armies, that no Jews lived in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem for two decades and that 800,000 Jews were expelled from neighboring Arab countries.”

“Thankfully, the vast majority of my colleagues in Congress and in the House Foreign Affairs Committee understand that the historical narrative in Congresswoman Tlaib’s resolution is an outrageous falsehood and thus this bill isn’t likely to be passed or even considered,” Sherman added.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) agreed that the resolution has no “hope of moving forward,” claiming the resolution seeks to “rewrite history and question Israel’s right to exist.”

“It’s unfortunate that this histrionic and invidious resolution was introduced now, particularly, as we see continued progress in efforts to normalize relations between Israel and its neighbors in the region,” Gottheimer added. “Divisive efforts like this only set back our fight against terror and the advancement of democracy in the region.”

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who advised multiple secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, said that the legislation asks Congress to “wade into the intricacies and volatility of some of the most combustible issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and essentially recognize a narrative.”

“This legislation is packed with landmines and traps,” Miller continued. “The whole issue of right of return is an issue that for years in negotiations we realized was the most combustible, most complicated, and the one which we had the least chance of resolving…. That’s the third rail of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.”

Miller emphasized that the legislation has no prospect of seeing widespread support in “any Congress that I can imagine.”

He described the legislation as “designed basically to support what the framers regard as an unrecognized, underreported and unacknowledged narrative in the American political scene of the Palestinians.” He added that the “Palestinian narrative has never been adequately explored or acknowledged” in U.S. politics and argued that “there was a way perhaps to go about this which would have recognized both Israeli independence and the Nakba being intertwined.” 

Some Republicans seized on the legislation.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) called it “the latest in a long line of antisemitic, anti-Israel statements, policies and actions by the most radical voiced in the Democratic Party.” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) called it “disgusting anti-Semitism.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said “the continued anti-Semitism from radical socialists in the House is horrific.” The three Republicans also sought to tie House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to the initiative, demanding that she condemn the move.