The ASSU Undergraduate Senate moved a step closer to voting on the controversial Israel divestment bill that members first discussed during winter quarter at its meeting last night.

Senator Nabill Idrisi ‘09, who authored the proposal, told his peers that he made several changes to the first version of the bill to reflect their concerns and those of other students. Barring a motion to table it, the Senate will vote on the issue at next week’s meeting.

“The main change is that it’s not immediately calling for divestment, but instead suggests following an established protocol of reevaluating investments in areas that cause ‘substantial social injuries,’” Idrisi said, referring to Stanford’s Statement on Investment Responsibility, which dictates that the Board of Trustees should consider divestment from companies whose “activities or policies cause substantial social injury.”

“The blame [for human rights abuses] is not placed on Israel as a state,” Idrisi added. “Rather, [the bill] is suggesting that it’s only these particular Israeli government policies that are causing human rights violations.”

Idrisi also cites Amnesty International’s statement that Palestinian human rights are violated by “closures, curfews and demolitions of homes as a form of collective punishment” in his proposal.

The bill asks the Board of Trustees to “reevaluate investments in companies that violate international law and abuse human rights in Israel and Palestine” in five ways, which range from companies deemed to be “enabling militant organizations to carry out attacks on civilians” to those “engaging in practices that institutionally discriminate against people of a specific race, religion or ethnicity.”

The revisions also recommend divesting from companies that support the “building or maintenance [of the] separation barrier currently being built in the West Bank”; companies that “facilitate home demolition, land confiscation or other acts of collective punishment”; and companies that “provide military support and weaponry to facilitate operations [in] illegally occupied” territories.

Idrisi’s changes also attempted to address concerns that the first version of the bill was explicitly biased because it did not acknowledge Palestinian responsibility for the conflict in the Middle East. To this end, Idrisi added a Human Rights Watch statement which read, “the Hamas-led Palestinian authority needs to take immediate steps to end attacks on civilians by Hamas’s own militant wing and other armed groups.”

While it encourages divestment from Israel, the bill makes a point of addressing the concerns of Jewish students on campus, stating that, “divestment from abuses in a particular country isn’t meant to alienate or offend students with strong religious or ethnic ties to that country.”

The Senate also approved changes to the judicial charter that will broaden the jurisdiction of the Board on Judicial Affairs in sexual assault cases and extend the time window for victims to report an offense.