By Truthout - Sharon Zhang - Published - September 11, 2025

Senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley said it’s clear Israel’s goal is to make life “unsustainable” in Gaza. Democratic senators have concluded that Israel is carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza in which the U.S. “is complicit” in a report released after their recent visit to Israel and Palestine.

In their 19-page report, Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) and Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) say that their visit made clear that Israel is carrying out collective punishment against Palestinians in Gaza. Though Israeli and U.S. officials say euphemistically that they are seeking to “relocate” Palestinians from the region, what Israel is really carrying out is a systematic campaign for forced displacement, they said. REPORT IN BOOK FORMAT

“We found that the Netanyahu government has used a two-pronged approach to pursue its current strategy to displace Palestinians from Gaza — the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure and the use of food and humanitarian assistance as a weapon of war. The goal is, in effect, to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinian population,” they wrote.

During their trip, Van Hollen and Merkley visited Israel, where they met with families of Israeli captives along with leaders like President Isaac Herzog, U.S. ambassador Mike Huckabee, and World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain. They were supposed to join an aid airdrop mission over Gaza by the Jordanian air force, but Israel denied clearance.

They also went to the occupied West Bank, where they met Palestinians who recounted horrific stories of settler violence, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who spoke of the “severe economic uncertainty” caused by U.S. and Israeli sanctions and regulations. Their report focused on Gaza, but the lawmakers noted that the West Bank is undergoing “ethnic cleansing in slow motion.”

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In their report, the lawmakers lay out the wide variety of ways they witnessed and heard of Israel blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. They said that conditions on the ground have worsened drastically even just from the last time they visited in January 2024.

Most of our findings relate to the fact that the Netanyahu government has willfully obstructed the flow of food and other humanitarian aid into Gaza in order to impose collective punishment on the population of Gaza for the sins of Hamas; to use the four GHF sites erected on May 26 as tools to restrict the flow of food and control population movement; and to make conditions so unbearable that Palestinians ‘volunteer’ to depart.

Humanitarian groups have long spoken of obstructions placed by the Israeli government on the entry and movement of aid in Gaza.

Van Hollen and Merkley’s report lays bare many of those restrictions, including Israel’s severe and ever-changing constraints on humanitarian convoy entry points, movement, and the type of goods allowed in. The report also highlights how Israel has allowed settlers to attack goods on their way to the Strip, and a wide variety of regulatory slowdowns obstructing aid groups at every single step.

The lawmakers said they talked to officials who estimated that one in three humanitarian convoys through the “Jordan Corridor” are attacked by Israeli settlers and protesters — despite supposedly being escorted for safe passage by Israeli forces. The corridor was established by Jordan for entry into Gaza via the West Bank and Israel.

Israel has not just failed to stop these attacks, but stoked them, they said, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir often “implicitly encourag[ing] the attacks.” Further, Israeli officials have barred trucks from carrying dashcams, tracking devices, or other equipment that would allow them to track and document potential attacks.

Much of the restrictions the lawmakers witnessed seem explicitly designed to cause harm and suffering. For instance, Van Hollen and Merkley noted that, since their last visit, Israel has added wheelchairs to the long, often arbitrary list of items banned from entry — even though Israeli attacks have disabled tens of thousands of people in Gaza, and continue to do so each day.

A common refrain from Israeli officials is that Hamas is looting the supplies. But even if this were true — and there has been no substantial evidence of this claim — Israel has worked to enable that practice, the lawmakers said. Israel has taken steps to split and slow humanitarian convoys that make them easier to target, while also not allowing them to vary their routes, which makes their movement predictable for looting.

“Most of their warehouses fall within designated military zones, and the Israeli government has denied regular access to them. These organizations said that ‘moving is one of the most dangerous things to do in Gaza,’ as aid workers face constant risk of being killed by Israeli fire,” the report says.

Further, any looting by residents is only happening because there is such a lack of supplies that the population is desperate, the lawmakers said.

Meanwhile, none of this is new, they noted. Israeli officials like Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have held the goal of occupying all of Gaza as “part of their vision of a greater Israel” long before October 7, 2023, they said.

“The findings from our trip lead to the inescapable conclusion that the Netanyahu government’s war in Gaza has gone far beyond the targeting of Hamas to imposing collective punishment on the Palestinians there, with the goal of making life for them unsustainable,” the lawmakers concluded.

“The fact that both the Netanyahu government and now the Trump Administration are framing their plan as a call for the ‘voluntary’ exodus of Palestinians from Gaza is one of the most fraudulent, sinister, and twisted cover stories ever told.”

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