Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived 

1. Bills, Resolutions & Letters
2. The Saga of S. 1
3. Hearings
4. On the Record

Shameless plug: The Forward 1/7/19:  The Surprising New Battleground In the War Against Palestinian Rights: Your Local Courthouse (by Lara Friedman, examining “the “ongoing and expanding campaign that seeks to exploit America’s laws, regulations, courts, and financial systems as tools to target Palestinians and to quash international support for and solidarity with them.”)

Another shameless plug: At the end of 2018, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act and state anti-boycott laws broke through into the public debate. Now, with the debate over the Combating BDS Act, that debate continues. For folks following or writing on these bills and the related issues, or simply looking to learn more, I've made it super easy by compiling source docs, court docs, expert analysis, etc all in one place: Constitutionality Issues & BDS Legislation: Source Docs & Expert Views

Brian Reeves, Director of External Relations at Peace Now, talks about the new West Bank settlement scandal: a plan to build another settlement near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, which would complete a ring around Bethlehem and severely threaten a two-state solution. Brian also talks about broader trends in settlement activity in 2018 and about what Peace Now’s Settlement Watch Project is focusing on going into 2019.

Debra Shushan, APN's Director of Policy and Government Relations, appears twice in the following Israel i24 News report from Dan Raviv about U.S. Senate Bill 1, which includes the so-called "Combating BDS Act" that APN opposes.

(UPDATE since the report below: Due to Democrat opposition, the Senate Bill 1 package that includes this act has been stalled both on Tuesday, January 8 by a vote of 56-44, and Thursday, January 10, by a vote of 53-43, neither enough to clear the 60-vote hurdle needed to advance.)

(UPDATE: As of January 15, Senate Majority Leader McConnell has tried to advance S.1, the bill that includes the so-called "Combating BDS Act," three times. Each time, McConnell's motions have failed to clear the 60-vote hurdle to advance, thanks to the vast majority of the Democratic caucus voting against cloture. And each time, immediately after his cloture motions have failed, McConnell has filed for a subsequent vote, in the apparent belief that putting Democratic senators on record voting against advancing S.1 will enable Republicans to paint the Democratic party as insufficiently "pro-Israel."

The vote tallies are as follows. On January 8, S.1 failed to advance by a vote of 56-44. On January 10, the tally was 53-43. And on January 14, the vote was 50-43. During the first two votes, four Democrats joined with Republicans in voting to advance S.1: Senators Manchin, Menendez, Sinema, and Jones. In the third vote, Senator Menendez, dropped his support because “I don’t like the Majority Leader using the US-Israel relationship as a political pawn.” McConnell has entered a motion for a fourth vote to advance S.1, but as of this writing that vote has not yet been scheduled.)

Americans for Peace Now (APN) opposes any bill that encourages state and local governments to adopt legislation which penalizes citizens who boycott Israel and/or Israeli settlements.

The Senate’s first piece of legislation in the 116^th session, dubbed S.1, does just that. Referred to as the “Middle East Security Bill” by its sponsor, Senator Marco Rubio, S.1 incorporates the Combating BDS Act of 2019 into a larger bill that would appropriate security funds for Israel and reauthorize defense cooperation between the US and Jordan.

Rashida Tlaib of Michigan is the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress.

Public attention focused on a profanity that Tlaib used in reference to President Trump shortly after being sworn in to the 116th Congress. This episode, instead, focuses on the significance of Tlaib’s coming to Washington for the Palestinian-American community, a community that has never enjoyed much political clout in the U.S.

Hanna Hanania, a prominent leader of the community, talks about what it means for Palestinian-American to have a progressive young woman in Congress who proudly asserts her Palestinian identity.

The state announced this week to court that the Lahav 433 police anti-fraud organization, as well as the State Prosecutor's Office, will be “examining” Peace Now’s complaints of two cases of illegal construction in the Binyamin Region Council area of the West Bank. The announcement came following two petitions that Peace Now filed to the High Court demanding that the Police and the State Prosecutor open investigations against the heads of the Binyamin Regional Council, the Amana settlement movement and other bodies that were involved in big projects of illegal construction in settlement outposts. One petition was about the establishment of the illegal outpost of Kerem Reim (west of Ramallah), and the other petition was against the construction of 21 housing units in the illegal outpost of Hayovel (south of Nablus).
 
The hearing of the petition concerning Hayovel will take place this Monday (7/1/19).
 
Peace Now: For 50 years now, a handful of settlers have been using public funds through the settlement councils and Amana to put facts on the ground that affect the future of all of us in violation of the law and of the government's decisions. The hesitation of the State Prosecutor's Office and the police to investigate the organized crime of illegal construction in the settlements is tantamount to granting immunity to the offenders and shows a lack of respect for the rule of law. The message the government is sending to the settlers is that they are above the law.