[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 137 (Saturday, September 28, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11630-S11632]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BLOODSHED IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the United States has played a central role
in the quest for peace in the Middle East, and in recent years we have
seen remarkable progress. I will never forget standing on the White
House lawn to witness the handshake that is etched in our memories
between Israel's late Prime Minister Rabin and Chairman Arafat,
signaling the beginning of a new partnership to end decades of
bloodshed.
We had high hopes then, and I am among those who believe in the
durability of the peace process. But the recent explosion of violence
between Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza, the worst
fighting since the 1993 peace accord, threatens to undermine the
advancements that have been made and stability in a region of vital
importance to the United States.
We have seen rock throwing crowds, Palestinian police firing on
Israeli soldiers, Israeli helicopter gunships spraying bullets into
houses and at unarmed civilians, gruesome photographs of the dead and
wounded, and the look of terror on children's faces.
There is ample blame to go around. Under cover of darkness and
without warning, the Israeli Government opened a tourist tunnel that
runs virtually under a holy site revered by both Israelis and
Palestinians. A mob response by Palestinians escalated into a firefight
between Palestinian police and Israeli troops.
Even before this latest crisis, the shift in policy of Prime Minister
Netanyahu on West Bank settlements reinforced the apprehension of
Palestinians that Israel would not fulfill the agreements entered into
by the Rabin and Peres governments.
The Israelis in turn can point to continued acts of terrorism and
extremely hostile statements by its Arab neighbors have contributed to
an atmosphere of increasing insecurity.
Mr. President, if we have learned anything in the Middle East, it is
that violence will not solve the age old problems there. While I fully
respect the decision of the majority of the Israeli people to change
their leaders, I do not believe that the election signified a decision
to abandon the peace process. Indeed, Prime Minister Netanyahu has
indicated that he has no intention of doing so. His intentions, and his
leadership, are being tested now.
The situation could not be more fragile. There is tremendous distrust
on both sides. Each suspects the other of seeking advantage, and of
failing to live up to prior commitments. As President Clinton has
stressed, this is a time for both sides to refrain from provocative
actions. The focus should be on emphasizing the positive, not
accentuating the negative.
Mr. President, I know others believe as I do that the peace process
can survive this latest catastrophe. But many lives have been lost in
the past 2\1/2\ days, and many innocent people have suffered. For our
part, the Congress should do everything possible to urge restraint, to
renew our pledge to support the efforts for peace of both Israelis and
Palestinians, and to condemn the extremists on both sides who would
seek to sabotage these efforts.
Among the concrete steps we can take is to ensure that U.S.
assistance to the Palestinians goes forward. With unemployment in the
West Bank and Gaza estimated at over 60 percent, there is an urgent
need to show the Palestinians that the peace process will lead to
tangible improvements in their lives. These improvements can be the
best engines of peace.
Mr. President, I want to commend President Clinton for his remarks on
Thursday, and to urge him to continue to use his influence with both
sides to stop the bloodshed.
I ask unanimous consent that two articles from today's Washington
Post, describing the deadly actions by both sides, be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 28, 1996]
In Gaza, Civilians Flee in Terror, as Helicopters Attack From Night Sky
(By John Lancaster)
Rafah, Gaza Strip, September 27.--Barely visible against
the night sky, the Israeli military helicopter hovered
several hundred feet above a darkened Rafah neighborhood. The
beat of its rotors mixed with crack of gunshots as Israeli
border troops exchanged fire with armed Palestinians hidden
in nearby buildings.
Two Palestinian youths, eager to display their battlefield
knowledge, argued about the model of the U.S.-made chopper
that hung over the rooftops. ``Apache,'' said one. ``No,
no,'' insisted the other. ``Cobra.''
Suddenly, the debate seemed academic.
With no warning and in the absence of any apparent threat
from the young men gathered in a sandy alley--without visible
weapons or involvement in the exchange of gunfire--the
helicopter opened fire in a terrifying, thunderous burst that
sent everybody scrambling for cover at the base of a
concrete-block wall. A moment or two later, in the midst of
another volley, a young man several feet away clutched his
forehead with both hands and fell to his knees, his face a
mask of crimson.
``I'm hit! I'm hit!'' he screamed.
Things had not started out this way. For the better part of
the day, calm seemed to prevail in the teeming, semi-
autonomous Gaza Strip. Residents observed the Muslim day of
rest. Palestinian police politely dispersed crowds of teens
who gathered to
[[Page S11631]]
throw stones at Israeli troops. That was in sharp contrast to
Thursday's armed clashes that killed 24 Palestinians and five
Israelis in Gaza.
By late in the day, however, violence had again erupted in
Gaza. The flash point this time was Rafah, a ramshackle town
of potholed roads and half-finished concrete building that
serves as the gateway between Egypt and the Palestinian self-
rule area in the Gaza Strip. The border crossing is guarded
by Palestinians on one side and Egyptians on the other, with
Israeli troops manning posts in between.
Witnesses said the trouble began around 3 p.m., when large
crowds of young people began throwing stones at the Israeli
posts. According to the witnesses, the Israelis then open
fire on the crowds. Next, armed Palestinian civilians began
returning fire from nearby buildings.
[The Israeli army said shots also were fired from the
Egyptian side and that the helicopter gunships were called in
to rescue trapped soldiers after an Israeli colonel was
killed and six soldiers were wounded, the Associated Press
reported.] The accounts could not be independently confirmed.
Palestinians in Rafah said their police at least tried to
avert the clash. ``The Palestinian police tried to stop me,''
said Akram Louli, 21, a student at the Islamic University in
Gaza who was among the stone-throwers. ``They told me, `Leave
this area and go away.' ''
But the police also appeared to be doing their best to
avoid confrontation with the protesters. ``They were so
polite,'' Louli said, adding that when they asked him to
leave, ``I told them, `No, I don't want to go,' so they left
me and went to push away some other kids.''
Ahmed Hassan, a 25-year-old policeman, said he and his
fellow patrolmen were ``trying to calm down the situation''
on orders from the Rafah police captain. But he added: ``The
people have too much anger. They are very courageous. They
are not listening to the police.''
Louli, the student, seemed to confirm as much when he vowed
that he would be on the streets the next day. ``I am planning
to do the same thing I did today,'' he said to murmurs of
approval from the young men at his side. ``The incidents are
going to be bigger.''
The city seemed relatively calm at dusk. Shops were open,
and children played on piles of sand used in construction.
Closer to the border crossing, however, the streets grew
dark, residents and shopkeepers having turned out many of
their lights.
A moment later it was clear why. Two young men, one
carrying a rock in each hand, waved down our vehicle and
told us to douse the headlights. They said the lights
could draw fire from the helicopters, which could be heard
plainly. Other drivers apparently had heeded the same
advice; occasionally they flashed their lights to
illuminate an intersection or perhaps a child.
On a side road, the gunfire became louder, and it seemed
prudent to go no farther. We stopped the car and darted into
a sandy alley where perhaps 20 teenagers and young men were
leaning against a building. Cocksure and chatty, the youths
said the helicopters had been firing on the area
sporadically, displaying several large brass cartridges that
they said had come from their cannons.
They said the gunfire from the buildings came not from
Palestinian police but from armed civilians who had ignored
police orders to leave the area.
After a few minutes, one of the men offered to show a
nearby home that he said had been fired on by a helicopter.
The owner, Talal Salah, led the way into a cramped rear
bedroom, then pointed to a fist-sized hole in the ceiling
that he said had been caused by shrapnel from an Israeli
cannon shell at 5:30 p.m. Salah, 35, said his two small
children were lying on the bed at the time but escaped
injury.
We left the home in a large group, and as we emerged from
the narrow alley in front of the house, the helicopter opened
fire. The young men's cockiness suddenly vanished. The
chopper fired perhaps three more bursts. It was after one of
them that the young man clutched his forehead and fell to the
ground.
In a panic, his companions rushed to his side. ``The car!
The car!'' they yelled, indicating they wanted to take the
injured man to the hospital. As they carried him to the car,
however, the helicopter unleashed another volley and the
crowd scattered. Several people ran down the street away from
the car, feeling nearly naked under the light of a street
lamp that had not been turned off.
After running for perhaps 50 yards, I was welcomed into a
small restaurant by a man pointing to the sky in warning. A
girl of perhaps 4 peeked out from the door of a makeshift
home. After offering a glass of water, one of the people
inside guided me to a nearby hospital, where I found my
Palestinian journalist companion and the injured man.
``It's not safe here,'' the journalist said, guiding me to
his car before I could inquire about the man's condition.
``We should leave.''
____
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 28, 1996]
Palestinians, Israeli Police Battle on Sacred Ground--Clashes Cool
Elsewhere as Guns Meet Stones in Jerusalem
(By Barton Gellman)
Jerusalem, September 27.--Israeli police and border guards
this afternoon stormed Jerusalem's Temple Mount, a holy site
for both Muslims and Jews, and shot dead three young men as a
stone-throwing crowd of worshipers emerged from Friday
prayers at al-Aqsa mosque. The clash brought the third day of
bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians to an emotional
crescendo at the plot of ground that embodies their national
and religious divide.
But even after that incendiary clash, or perhaps because of
its implications, the two sides stepped back carefully from
confrontation elsewhere. In all, nine people died in street
battles today, according to hospitals and Israeli and
Palestinian officials, and a major gun battle raged tonight
in the Gaza border town of Rafah between armed Palestinians
and Israeli troops, who opened fire on groups of civilians
from helicopter gunships. But direct firefights involving
uniformed Palestinian police nearly ceased, and forces loyal
to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat planted themselves
between demonstrators and Israeli troops in Nablus and
Ramallah in the West Bank and in many parts of the Gaza
Strip.
After a three-day death toll of 66--52 Palestinians and 14
Israelis--both sides seemed headed back from the brink of
genuine war. The sullen stalemate to which they returned
sounded much the same as the one that began the week, and it
was not obvious tonight whether the traumas that intervened
had done more to harden their positions or to spur them
toward new political steps.
``Maybe we've gotten through it,'' said an exhausted U.S.
consul general in Jerusalem, Edward Abington, who worked
through the night on Thursday and all day today to broker a
still-unscheduled summit between Arafat and Israeli Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. ``I don't know for sure, but
it's a possibility.''
Netanyahu, in his first public remarks since returning from
an aborted European tour, accused Arafat's Palestinian
Authority of ``willful and untruthful incitement'' against
the Jewish state. ``I tell him today: Our hand is stretched
out to you in peace, but we will not agree that during the
negotiations there will be a war option too,'' the premier
said in a news conference with his security chiefs,
maintaining that the Palestinians were using the threat of
violence to extract concessions.
After two days of telephone diplomacy by Secretary of State
Warren Christopher, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns
said the United States believes a meeting between Netanyahu
and Arafat ``will be held very soon.''
According to witnesses on both ends of a 30-minute phone
call between Netanyahu and Arafat after 2 a.m. (8 p.m. EDT
Thursday), the Israeli leader warned Arafat to put a stop to
Palestinian police rifle fire at Israeli forces and said he
would use ``every means available'' to respond if it resumed.
Netanyahu deployed tanks and armored personnel carriers
outside Nablus, Ramallah and Jericho to underscore the
threat, and hawks in his cabinet said he had waited too long
already and should use them.
But the worst violence of the day came in the old style of
the six-year uprising against Israeli occupation that began
in 1987: Palestinians threw rocks on the Temple Mount, and
Israeli forces responded with overwhelming force.
The Temple Mount--where the third-holiest mosque in Islam
rises over the Western Wall, which is Judaism's most sacred
site--was regarded from the start as today's greatest risk.
Israel ringed the walled Old City with more than 3,500 police
and border police, who stopped and frisked young Arab men all
morning.
With Arafat calling for a return to calm, fewer worshipers
than usual--well under 10,000--turned out today at the
sprawling al-Aqsa mosque, which faces the Dome of the Rock
across a broad plaza. Mohammed Hussein, who delivered the
sermon inside the 8th-century mosque and by loudspeaker
audible for blocks, said the Netanyahu government committed
``a crime against God'' by completing a tunnel adjacent to
the outer wall of the Temple Mount, which Muslims call Haram
Sharif.
``These are great confrontations for al-Aqsa,'' he said,
voice booming. ``It's your religious duty to defend al-
Aqsa.''
Israeli Internal Security Minister Avigdor Kahalani, in an
interview at the scene, said his troops did not open fire
until worshipers departing the mosque threw ``thousands and
thousands of stones at police'' standing at the gates and at
Jews standing on the Western Wall plaza below. ``We're not
going to turn the other cheek,'' he said, adding that police
had responded with ``a little gas'' and ``a few rubber
bullets.'' He denied categorically that live ammunition had
been used.
That account conflicted with some of the physical evidence
and the recollections of witnesses atop the Temple Mount,
including a Dutch relief worker interviewed at Makassed
Hospital in East Jerusalem. There were no stones visible on
the Western Wall plaza, and Jewish witnesses there said none
or nearly none had fallen. Many stones were scattered atop
the Temple Mount, but they were concentrated in the central
plaza as if thrown at targets who were already inside.
Palestinian and a few foreign witnesses, corroborated in
parts by amateur videotape shot on the mount, said hundreds
of Israeli troops rushed in swinging clubs and fired hundreds
of rounds of steel-cored rubber bullets, which can be lethal
at close range. Doctors at Makassed Hospital, where three of
the wounded Palestinians died and 48 others were admitted,
allowed reporters to inspect X-rays demonstrating that some
of the
[[Page S11632]]
wounded had been struck by conventional high-velocity rounds
from Israeli M-16 assault rifles.
For more than an hour after the confrontation, wounded
Palestinians were carried out in haste through stone
alleyways toward the gates of the Old City. Frantic friends
and relatives raced toward the hospital with a women bleeding
from the head, a man unconscious on a stretcher, an old man
in a wheelchair with bleeding wounds in the chest and arm,
another old man bleeding from the head and several more
injured.
Many worshipers were still praying inside al-Aqsa mosque
when the confrontation began outside. Some of those on the
plaza ran back inside, and the Israeli forces fired through
the doors and open windows, causing many more casualties.
``Bullets were flying over our heads,'' said Hussein Adib,
47. ``The rugs on which we were praying were covered with
blood.''
If the Temple Mount was the day's great failure, Nablus was
its success. Six Israeli soldiers died there Thursday at
Joseph's Tomb, traditional burial place of the biblical
patriarch and an island of Jewish control in the
Palestinian self-ruled town. By nightfall Thursday, about
40 Israeli soldiers remained, surrounded by hundreds of
Palestinian troops.
On-scene negotiations through the night between Maj. Gen.
Uzi Dayan, chief of Israel's Central Command, and Maj. Gen.
Haj Ismail Jabber, chief of the Palestinian West Bank police,
worked out a cease-fire. This morning, when demonstrators
from the Balata Refugee Camp tried to resume the attack,
senior Palestinian Authority leaders linked arms and, backed
by Palestinian troops in riot gear, stood between the angry
crowd and its Israeli targets. Similar scenes played out in
Jenin and Ramallah.
There were a few places in the territories today where
uniformed Palestinian troops joined again in attacks on
Israeli soldiers. Two Israeli border guards and a Palestinian
policeman died in a gun battle outside the northern West Bank
town of Tulkarm, and Palestinian policemen helped attempt to
storm an Israeli army post outside the self-ruled town of
Jericho.
In Gaza, Palestinian police appeared to make a genuine
effort to avert further clashes, though there was some
question as to how far they were willing to go to rein in
angry Palestinian youths.
Near the Erez crossing point, scene of some of Thursday's
bloodiest battles, about 30 armed Palestinian police in olive
drab uniforms formed a cordon across the road to keep out
potential protesters.
Protesters did converge on another potential flash point,
the crossroad leading to the Jewish settlement of Netzarim.
But police prevented them from getting anywhere near the
Israeli posts.
In some cases, police officers handled the mostly youthful
protesters with almost fatherly indulgence, sometimes draping
an arm around a shoulder to emphasize their eagerness to
avoid confrontation.
``What we had yesterday was enough,'' explained police
Capt. Shaban Awad. ``Fifty killed--it's enough. We want to
avoid more violence.''
In Jerusalem the tunnel that sparked three days of lethal
conflict was closed to tourists today.
In many parts of Israel and the Palestinian self-rule
territories, attention turned from fighting to burying the
dead. Israeli Staff Sgt. Itamar Sudai, who died at Joseph's
Tomb Thursday, was laid to rest at Mount Herzl with eulogies
from top army brass and a tribute from a survivor of the
battle there.
``My brother,'' said the young soldier, identified only as
Uri, ``you've gone before me. All our dreams were so close to
being realized. So close and in a minute, everything's
gone.''
Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I be allowed to
speak up to 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________