Senate again fails to block weapons to Israel

Another effort to limit U.S. arms shipments to Israel failed in the Senate on Wednesday as the body voted down a pair of measures that would block certain military sales to the country.

The two joint resolutions of disapproval — one targeting a $150 million sale of 1,000-pound bombs and the other a $300 million sale of bulldozers — failed by votes of 36-63 and 40-59, respectively. The votes marked the fourth effort to restrict arms sales to Israel since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023.

The vote count marked a meaningful improvement — some are even calling it ‘historic — over the most recent similar effort in July 2025. At that time, 27 Democrats voted to block the sales, which was considered progress. As in that vote, a larger number of senators opposed the transfer of military equipment more closely associated with use in the West Bank. (In July, three more Democrats voted to block the transfer of automatic rifles distributed to settlers than voted to block the sale of certain bombs.)

“As Israeli forces again use US weapons to decimate civilian towns and villages, this time in Lebanon, and violations continue in Gaza and the West Bank, Senate Democrats are making clear that there is a new consensus forming in Washington: US arms sales must comply with US and international law, without exception,” John Ramming Chappell, an adviser at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, told Responsible Statecraft.

Cavan Kharrazian, senior policy advisor at Demand Progress, called the vote “historic” adding that “[t]he Overton window is shifting, and Congress is finally starting to catch up with the majority of Americans who don’t think we should keep spending taxpayer dollars to ship more weapons to Israel.”

Only seven Democrats voted against both resolutions: Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.).

The bulldozer vote — which aimed to restrict the possible sale of Caterpillar D9 bulldozers, sometimes used to destroy homes in the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon — was the first of its kind in the Senate. The Biden administration reportedly froze the sale of these bulldozers to Israel in November 2024, but the decision was overturned the following January.

In the lead-up to the vote on Wednesday, Cindy Corrie, the mother of an American citizen killed in 2003 by a U.S-made bulldozer while trying to protect a Palestinian home from demolition, wrote a piece for The Nation urging the Senate to support the measure.

“Caterpillar bulldozers are being used not to build but to destroy—to erase communities and deliberately make land uninhabitable,” Corrie wrote. “If Israel were serious about reconstruction, it would open the crossings and allow needed machinery in. Instead, it is importing American bulldozers to tear down what little remains.”

Earlier in the day on Wednesday, the Senate voted for the fourth time this year to block a War Powers Resolution that would limit Trump’s ability to go to war with Iran. Once again, only Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) voted across party lines — Paul to vote for, Fetterman to vote against the resolution.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of the co-sponsors of the joint resolutions of disapproval, tried to explicitly tie the vote against the war in Iran and legislation on arms sales together.

“[F]or Netanyahu, Gaza was not enough. Iran was not enough,” Sanders wrote in an op-ed for the Guardian. “He is now waging a full-blown war of expansion against Lebanon. That war has not only killed more than 2,000 people, but has resulted in Israel occupying 14% of Lebanese territory.”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) made a similar argument during the floor debate Wednesday. “Make no mistake: a vote to approve arms sales to Israel at this time would be seen as a message of approval for Trump and Netanyahu’s disastrous war against Iran. I will not send that message,” he said.

Other Democrats, however, tried to make the case that the two votes are distinct, and that they could oppose the U.S-Israel war on Iran without voting to block the sale of bombs to Tel Aviv.

Kharrazian said he is “baffled and incensed that some Democrats who just earlier today voted to block Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal, disastrous war then turned around and greenlit offensive weapons to the Israeli military” despite its ongoing war in Lebanon. “You cannot oppose a war in one vote and fuel it with bombs in the next,” he argued.

The Wednesday vote was closely watched as midterms approach and the Democratic Party gears up for the 2028 presidential primary, in which policy toward Israel and the Middle East is likely to play a meaningful role. Advocates who supported the resolutions told RS that they were monitoring members rumored to be interested in running for president in 2028 who had not voted for all the prior attempts, including Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). All five Senators voted in favor of both joint resolutions on Wednesday.