[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 61 (Tuesday, May 14, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H2442-H2448]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2130
                          MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Tiberi). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. 
Hoeffel) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call to the attention of 
the House the very serious problem that exists in the Middle East and 
to report back to the House with several colleagues this evening on a 
trip taken to Israel the weekend before last to express solidarity with 
the people of Israel and with the government of Israel in light of the 
campaign of terror that has been directed against them by the 
Palestinians. We will be joined later this evening by the gentleman 
from Florida (Mr. Deutsch), who has organized, or attempted to 
organize, this evening an Oxford style debate between those of us who 
voted in favor of a resolution to express solidarity with the people of 
Israel and those few Members of the House who voted in the negative on 
that question. Unfortunately, those that opposed the resolution of 
solidarity with Israel have chosen not to participate in the debate 
this evening.
  It is unfortunate, Mr. Speaker. We are missing an opportunity, I 
think, to have a good debate and a good discussion regarding the right 
of Israel to defend herself and the position of America that in my view 
should be not to try to limit Israel's right of self-defense. But I am 
happy to report that the gentleman from Florida has arrived, the 
organizer of the discussion this evening and the man who tried to 
organize this Oxford style debate to his great credit.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding. We had 
scheduled it for 9:30. It is about 9:30. As you described, we made an 
offer and we actually had an agreement this evening to have an Oxford 
debate about the resolution. As many people who are watching and 
obviously as Members, we know that our normal debate that we have is 
not really debate. People almost read statements and they read them to 
each other and there is no discourse. I think those of us who supported 
the resolution, many of us sat through literally several hours of 
debate and at some level a great deal of frustration, because people 
say things that there really is no opportunity to ask them to respond 
to try to clarify their position or really even ask them to defend 
their position. So we had set up this where under the House rules there 
is an opportunity for an Oxford style debate to interact with Members. 
We offered that opportunity and again, I guess there were 21 Members 
that voted against the resolution and 29 that did not vote. It is less 
than 15 percent of the membership of the House, but a sizable number of 
people.
  We had the opportunity to cancel this evening or go forward, and what 
we thought we might do is in a sense maybe try to even literally re-
read some of the arguments that the opponents of the resolution made 
and really in an attempt to maybe flesh out what their thoughts were. I 
think those of us who will be here this evening defending the 
resolution obviously find it hard to articulate their positions. Maybe 
they are in fact positions that cannot be articulated.
  I would like to start maybe this evening and read one and I have a 
number of quotes from opponents of the resolution and there is no point 
in mentioning names but you might remember this one. It was in a poem 
that was spoken by a good friend and a good colleague of ours whom I 
respect on so many issues but I was extraordinarily disappointed with 
his comments.
  By poem he stated, ``Oh, little town of Bethlehem, we witness and we 
cry, Israelis and Palestinians, both practice eye for eye.''
  Perhaps the gentleman from Pennsylvania would want to respond to that 
statement.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. What struck me as off-target with that statement was the 
notion that there is some kind of equivalence here between the behavior 
of the Palestinians and the behavior of the Israelis. Our colleague who 
said that, who is a fine Member of this House, seems to feel that there 
is some moral equivalence between the actions of the two sides that he 
stated. That does not persuade me, Mr. Speaker, because what we are 
seeing on the side of the Palestinians are acts of terror directed 
intentionally against innocent, unarmed Israeli civilians, men, women 
and children. What we are seeing from the Israeli side are acts of 
self-defense, military acts by the armed forces of Israel, but acts 
that are not designed to kill Palestinian civilians in some kind of 
retribution but acts by the Israeli army to defend Israel.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. If the gentleman will yield, I think there are so many 
parallels between what the Israelis did with their incursion into the 
West Bank areas and what the United States did with our incursion into 
Afghanistan. This poem, I think, would in a sense give the same moral 
equivalency to the murderers who attacked the World Trade Center and 
the Pentagon and the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania with the United 
States military action in Afghanistan and really trying to set up a 
moral equivalency of that. There is a fundamental difference.

  Again, these are different Members that spoke during the debate. I am 
going to quote another Member: ``I thought there was one thing that 
might turn the tide in this struggle and it was a horrible tragedy in 
the end of March.'' And he showed a picture that actually was on the 
cover of Newsweek magazine, I believe, of two young girls.
  ``Look at these two young women. They look like sisters. One, Ayat 
al-Akhras, 18, was a suicide bomber who killed Rachel Levy at the 
grocery store, age 17. I thought that both sides would be so appalled 
by this unbelievable tragedy and see the hopelessness of this that they 
might turn toward peace. But, no, that has not happened there.''
  If we can, maybe if the gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner) can 
respond.
  Mr. WEINER. If the gentleman from Pennsylvania will yield, what is 
interesting, I would say to the gentleman from Florida, that that 
dynamic has been portrayed several times in the media, that there are 
so many parallels between the 17-year-old that straps dynamite to his 
or her chest and the 17-year-old that might have been taken as an 
innocent victim. But the fact of the matter is that that suicide 
bomber, that homicide bomber, is bringing the Palestinian people 
further, not closer, to their objective of having a homeland. I do not 
think any of us would agree in this body that if the Palestinians 
announced and did more than announce, they actually began to operate 
without violence and to sit down and really negotiate for a Palestinian 
homeland, if they would have done that arguably years and years ago, it 
would be a reality today.
  We have to recognize one thing that some of my colleagues did not 
recognize in the debate. Someone who blows themselves up and anyone 
around them blows them to bits is not engaged in political speech. They 
are not engaged in debate. They are not furthering the cause of 
bringing the two sides together. What they are doing is murdering 
people.
  We have to recognize what sometimes often gets overlooked is this 
notion that someone who is engaged in

[[Page H2443]]

suicide bombing is acting out of desperation that was created by 
another set of instances. There are all kinds of circumstances in the 
world that have been resolved without suicide bombing. In fact, most 
political conflicts in the world, thank God, do not result in one group 
of people attacking the civilians of the other side.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Would the gentleman agree that the whole phrase of 
suicide bombing is also missing the point here? When I hear the phrase 
``suicide bomber,'' I think one person committed suicide. I think the 
gentleman used a separate phrase a minute ago that is a lot more 
illustrative of what is actually happening here.
  Mr. WEINER. Let me give an example and the gentlemen in their most 
recent visit, I am sure, visited some victims in the hospital. I had 
the opportunity to visit a 15-year-old girl who was the victim of a 
homicide bomber. She was not killed, thank God, but she showed me her 
x-ray that included in it 18 hexagonal nuts that was packed around 
dynamite that were used as projectiles projected into her young body. 
This is savagery. This is not something that brings the debate any 
closer to closure. It is not something that brings the two sides 
closer.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. If I could interject, again I am trying to bring quotes 
in from the debate against the resolution and this is again from a very 
esteemed colleague of ours, someone whom all three of us I know respect 
a great deal, but his statement was, and I am quoting, ``Generations of 
Palestinians and Israelis have suffered in the region, but the violence 
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be examined or addressed in 
isolation of decades of occupation of millions of Palestinians.''
  I think it ties directly to what you are saying, that in some way 
occupation justifies suicide bombings.
  Mr. WEINER. We heard similar language throughout some quarters of the 
Arab world in reaction to September 11, is that this is what happens if 
you do not have an energy policy we like or a foreign policy or an 
agricultural policy, we send 15 suicide bombers to murder 3,000 
Americans. We have to recognize, and we have to be able to separate. 
This is at its fundamental element a complex and gut-wrenching dispute 
over land. It is difficult. We have difficult political subtexts. We 
have biblical subtexts. We have historical subtexts. But these things 
cannot be resolved in an environment where one side is attacking the 
other side in the most savage and most despicable ways.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. I think one of the interesting things, just in response 
to that exact point is that at the Camp David negotiations the Israelis 
were willing to give up and, in fact, offered 97 or 98 percent of the 
West Bank and Gaza and if you include some of the transfer of land in 
the Negev, effectively 100 percent of the land mass that is in a sense 
occupied. That was offered and it was rejected. So if the cause of the 
disturbance is occupation, the Israelis offered to end the occupation.
  Mr. WEINER. I would go even further than that. You do not need to go 
to Camp David at September of 2000. You can go to the Oslo process that 
began in 1993 that had the Israeli government entering into an 
agreement to end the occupation, to not only begin to foster democracy 
in the Palestinian region but to fund it. Many of the guns being used 
against Israeli soldiers today were provided by the Israelis because 
the Palestinians said we need a police force. The Israelis not only 
gave them uniforms and gave them funding but gave them the actual guns. 
You can go back to 1948, the birth of the Jewish state, where it was 
the Israelis who were prepared to say, listen, we will take a divided 
neighborhood, essentially, if it guarantees us peace. You can look at 
the Wye River agreement. You can look at the Mitchell plan. You can 
look at the Tenet plan. You can look at plan after plan where it was 
the Israelis who said yes, and it was the Palestinians that said no. 
But they said no because the only thing that it really was predicated 
on was peaceful coexistence, which leads one to believe that ultimately 
the Palestinian people themselves have to make a decision. They have to 
make a decision, do they want to continue to cross swords or do they 
ultimately want their own state?
  I think the Members who are here on the floor would agree that if 
this was a peaceful struggle, it would have resulted in a Palestinian 
state generations ago.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. It is funny, not funny but tragic, that if it was a 
Martin Luther King instead of a Yasser Arafat or a Gandhi instead of an 
Arafat, I think you are absolutely correct because the majority and 
even with the vote by the Likud Central Committee, which I think was a 
political statement, I as recently as today read polls of the Israeli 
public. The vast majority of Israelis support a two-state solution 
because they understand that is a solution, that there is a puzzle fit 
that works. That will happen at some point in time when there is a 
partner to engage in that solution.

                              {time}  2145

  The chart that I have up now, one of the things, had we been in an 
Oxford debate and had the other side showed up, was really the first 
chart that I was going to put up for today, and it is hard to read and 
hopefully the television camera is focusing in on it. But the Israeli 
incursion occurred on March 31. Prior to March 31, as many of my 
colleagues remember, starting literally 11 days or 12 days or 13 days 
before, there was a series of suicide bombings actually starting in 
March: March 2, March 5, March 7, March 9, March 17, March 20, March 
21. March 27 was the so-called Passover bombing in Netanya where 27 
Israelis were killed; and then the 29th, and then actually on the 31st 
was in Haifa, the restaurant that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. 
Hoeffel) and I visited or, actually, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Kingston) and I visited. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) 
was actually at another place in that period when we were in Israel, 
but that we visited on that trip that occurred on the 31st. Then after 
that series of suicide bombings, killing over 100 people, I could count 
them up, close to 100 people, maybe 150 people during that amount of 
time, one of the numbers that I have talked about on several occasions, 
and I will put this chart up just to reiterate that, Israel in terms of 
population is about one-sixtieth, one-fiftieth, one-sixtieth the size 
of the United States of America. We are about 300 million plus people, 
5 million plus, and the equivalent, just in terms of population, when 
50 Israelis are killed, it is the equivalent of 9-11 to the United 
States of America. I am describing March. It was the equivalent of 
three September 11ths.
  Now, we know what the United States did after September 11. We went 
6,000 miles to a country and appropriately, and I do not think there is 
a Member of this Chamber who did not support, I do not think 
effectively as Americans we did not support what we did. Can we expect 
anything less for the Israelis to do, when three September 11ths 
occurred in the month of March in their country. I think that is the 
justification. I mean if a country is not protecting its citizens from 
death, from terrorism; I mean that is our fundamental role as 
government, and that is what they did. In a sense, they did not have a 
choice. The Israelis do not want to be in Bethlehem or Nabulus or Jenin 
any more than the United States wants to be in Afghanistan. We do not 
want to be in Afghanistan, but we are there for the reason that we have 
to be there, the same way they have to be there.
  Mr. WEINER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, something else 
that is important to keep in mind, in that period from October 2000 to 
today the Israeli government and the Israeli people have not only been 
fighting terror by military means, almost at the same time and, 
frankly, almost in a counterintuitive way, given the way we have 
handled our attack since September 11, is that they have continued to 
keep the doors open to negotiation.
  For example, when former Senator George Mitchell, who has some 
experience in negotiating peace in difficult parts of the world, when 
he traveled there, he came up with some principles of a plan, 
essentially to start a framework to get back to peace. It was the 
Israelis who said, although it asked for very difficult concessions 
from the Israelis, including lifting up the roots of many Israeli 
families and moving them out of their homes, the Israelis said yes. The 
Palestinians, who had to do essentially one thing, which was to stop 
bombing and stop firing, they said no.

[[Page H2444]]

  Then we sent CIA Director Tenet over to the area to see if they could 
perhaps get the wheels started to the Mitchell plan. Once again, asked 
tough things of the Israelis, including loosening up border crossings 
at a time when they knew terrorists were coming through those borders, 
Israelis said yes and the Palestinians said no. Even when Vice 
President Cheney and Secretary of State Powell visited the area to try 
to negotiate peace, it was the Israelis who expressed a willingness and 
the Palestinians who would not relent in their violence. In fact, some 
of the worst violence in the area on the part of the Palestinians have 
come when U.S. emissaries, trying to negotiate peace, have been there.
  So at the same time, while a great deal of attention has been called 
to the fact of Israel going door to door trying to rout out terrorism, 
it should not be ignored that even in that context, even in the context 
of all of the carnage over the last 18 months, the Israeli people and 
their government have still said, do you want to make peace? We are 
ready to do it. I think that is to their great credit.
  Imagine for a moment if bin Laden or Mullah Omar presented himself 
next week and said, you know what? I want to negotiate. I want to 
negotiate the peace here. Maybe if the United States gives up Texas and 
Louisiana, I will leave you alone, and I do not just say that because 
they are Republican areas, I would say to the Speaker, we are prepared 
to have a negotiation. We would laugh at it. Yet, in Israel, despite 
the carnage that they have had, they have been negotiating at the same 
time, hoping against hope that the Palestinian people would choose 
peace over violence.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, if I could give the gentleman an individual 
example of that spirit of the Israelis, that willingness to remain 
positive and to maintain their humanity in the face of this horror, let 
me tell my colleagues about Gila Weiss, a former constituent of mine 
who graduated from high school in my district in 1988 when she was 
known as Jennifer Weiss. Her parents still live in my district, Fred 
and Susan Weiss. Jennifer moved to Israel, changed her name to Gila, 
and is making her life there. On April 19, 2002, she was shopping at 
the Jewish market the Friday before Sabbath, finished making her 
purchases, walked to the bus to get the bus back to her apartment and, 
as she was approaching the arriving bus, a woman stepped off the bus 
and blew herself up. She killed 6 people, wounded 40, Gila among them, 
using a suicide vest such as is pictured in the photo of the gentleman 
from Florida (Mr. Deutsch) that I know he wants to talk about in just a 
minute. But let me just tell my colleagues about Gila.
  She survived that blast, shredded with shrapnel; her eyesight is 
still in jeopardy today, but the doctors are optimistic that she will 
make a full recovery and she will recover from the wounds that the 
shrapnel caused. When the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch) and I 
visited the hospital on our trip to Israel, Gila was there to greet us, 
showing incredible spirit, and indicated, without even being prompted, 
that in the face of this terror that she had faced and incredibly 
survived, that she did not harbor hatred herself toward her attackers; 
the individual, now dead, or the Palestinian people or leaders that 
sent that bomber to that bus stop in Jerusalem.
  When I returned from my trip, I gave a report to my district and 
asked Mrs. Weiss, Susan Weiss, to be with me. She talked about the 
injuries and the terrible ordeal that Gila had been through, and her 
parents, and then Susan Weiss, unprompted, told the assembled press 
corps in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that she harbored no 
animosity, that she felt that we had to move forward and try to figure 
out some way someday, somehow to return this process to peace. 
Recognizing the need for defense now, recognizing the need for safety 
now, the security of Israel being paramount, but both Gila and her 
mother were prepared, even though they have suffered the worst kind of 
experience with terror, prepared to move forward to try to reach peace.
  Mr. WEINER. Mr. Speaker, one of the things that is important about 
the story that the gentleman has just told, the Israeli people, because 
of their fundamental belief in democracy, something that our country 
shares and something that over 373 Members of Congress recognized when 
the resolution passed, on the other side of this debate is a group of 
people, the Palestinians who, in their schoolbooks, in their 
classrooms, even on their television screens, are preaching hatred.
  The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch) made the mention of Nelson 
Mandela as a peacemaker. One does not have to go that far. One can look 
in that same region of the world not so long ago and look at the 
courageous stand of Anwar Sadat. One of the first things he did when 
preparing the Egyptian people who had been in a hateful, passionate war 
with the Israelis, one of the first things that he did as a sign of his 
courage that ultimately led to his death, is he turned to his own 
people in Arabic on Egyptian television and said, look, it is in our 
interests to make peace. We do not do it because we like them. We do 
not do it because we like their presence in the area, but it is because 
it is in our interests.
  On the other hand, despite the requirement in the Oslo Accords that 
they stop teaching hate in their schoolbooks, they stop teaching hate 
to their children, the seeds of hate keep getting planted every day. 
This morning, if you flip on Palestinian TV during the cartoon hour, 
you will see commercials aimed at young children that have a playful 
song that says, put down your books, take up your arms, directed at 
young children. We see protests in Nabulus. We have parents with their 
children on their shoulders, children like in all of our districts, 
except in these cases they have pretend suicide bomb belts around their 
waists.
  The thing that I fear the most is irrespective of our intentions, 
irrespective of the feelings of the people of Israel and irrespective 
of even the best instinct of the Palestinian people, the seeds of hate 
that we are planting today among Palestinian children will take a 
generation to eradicate. That is the fundamental difference here. 
Someone should be held responsible for that, and I think that person 
should be that of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman can yield for a second, 
trying to keep this in somewhat of a debate without another side being 
here, which I almost feel we should have an empty chair like they 
sometimes do in political debates when the other side does not show up. 
But it is interesting, much has been made in terms of who voted against 
it, why they voted against it, but there were Democrats and 
Republicans. Again, less than 15 percent of the Congress, but I am 
going to quote from one of our Republican colleagues and the quote is, 
``If we are going to bring peace to that troubled region, we must be 
scrupulously honest. There are piles of bodies in the Middle East, many 
of the victims of noncombatants, and both sides of the conflict have 
engaged in the slaughter of innocents.''
  Someone said that from the floor of this Chamber not that long ago, a 
week and a half ago. I see the gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner) 
shaking his head no. Now he has an opportunity to respond.
  Mr. WEINER. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman from Florida, 
and this is something that is easily verified, there has not been a 
single instance in the history of the conflict where, with the possible 
exception being the preemptive strike in the war of 1967 that the 
Israelis have initiated violence. When we see these images on 
television of kids throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and Israeli 
soldiers responding, invariably those are organized efforts by 
Palestinian protestors to engage in a highly publicized exchange.

  There is not anyone who believes, for example, that the Israeli 
military had any interest in going into Ramallah, for example, knocking 
on doors looking for terrorists, had it not been for the fact that 
there had been horrific slaughters of innocent victims, including those 
observing the Passover holiday.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, one of the 
things that I guess is frustrating, having sat on this floor and 
listened to the debate is the simple distinction that the gentleman is 
making. It is so frustrating that these are well educated, well

[[Page H2445]]

thought of, thoughtful colleagues who have made these statements that I 
am reading word for word out of the Congressional Record on the debate. 
When the Israelis went into Jenin or for that matter Ramallah or for 
that matter other locations, because I talked a couple of minutes ago 
about the reason for the incursion, that there was this horrific 
activity occurring at monumental levels in their society.
  One of the things that we witnessed in our visit to Israel was in a 
sense the proof on the other side, and this is one of many pictures 
that we have. One of the opportunities we had was to view just a 
fraction of the weapons that were seized during the incursion, about 10 
percent of the weapons. In this Chamber, if we added all the weapons 
that we saw, it would probably fill this entire Chamber. Weapons of 
mortars, and I will show some additional pictures of machine guns and 
sniper rifles. But I think the most evil was literally witnessing 
suicide vests, and they are not kids creating suicide vests. I mean as 
we saw them, and my colleagues can see in the picture, they are 
commercially made. We actually saw different versions, summer versions, 
winter versions, autumn versions so that they would not be seen. But, 
in a sense, that is the proof of why.
  I guess the frustration that an intelligent person could make a 
statement like that or make some of the other statements that I have 
read, not to distinguish; in the United States, we call it collateral 
damage. In our military action, in fact our ongoing military action in 
Afghanistan, there have been innocents who have died. We did not go 
house to house in Tora Bora. We bombed, as we should, absolutely as we 
should, as was appropriate and with the knowledge that there would be 
some collateral damage because of the risks involved and the morality 
involved in terms of doing it, it was absolutely appropriate. The 
Israelis could have attacked Jenin the way we attacked Tora Bora. They 
could have bombed from the air without risking lives. There is no 
question that a number of Israelis, a significant number of Israeli 
soldiers died because of the effort that they made. I do not doubt, and 
in fact I am sure, there were innocents who were killed in the action 
in Jenin. But I think not to understand there is a fundamental 
difference between someone being killed in that action where, by all 
accounts, the Israeli defense forces' efforts to make sure that 
civilians were not killed are minimized. I mean there are just so many 
specific accounts. In fact, before the soldiers went into the battle, 
their orders were to do everything possible, put their own lives at 
risk in terms of avoiding collateral damage. One thing also, I mean 
there is a whole different viewpoint when it does occur. The attitude 
of the Israeli defense force is not just remorse, but it is a horrific 
situation. It is tragic. There is no words that can possibly 
compensate.

                              {time}  2200

  But the entire attitude is a totally different attitude. The efforts 
of a megaphone to tell people to get out. Give them another chance to 
get out. Give them a third chance to get out. Tell them what is going 
to happen if they do not get out and give them every opportunity to get 
out. And yet we are hearing colleagues say that is the same as a murder 
bomber.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. If the gentleman would yield, what our colleague is 
missing is the intention behind the actions. The actions of the 
Palestinians when they commit terror, they are intending to kill 
innocent civilians and the Israelis are intending to defend themselves. 
That is the fundamental difference.
  The action that the gentleman describes and both gentlemen have 
referred to, the military incursion into Jenin and other areas of the 
West Bank first was designed to stop the terror from continuing to come 
against Israel. It certainly was taken at great risk to members of the 
Israeli defense forces and 22 Israeli soldiers died in Jenin and had 
the Israelis chosen to bomb I doubt any Israeli soldiers would have 
died. But it also uncovered an extraordinary number of weapons, as the 
gentleman has mentioned, most of them in complete violation to the Oslo 
Accord that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner) described.
  The Palestinian police under Oslo were allowed to maintain handguns, 
rifles and AK-47s.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. If the gentleman would yield, this is as he witnessed 
himself, and this is just a very small cache of mortars which obviously 
are illegal under the Oslo Accord.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Exactly right. That is a very good picture illustrating 
the point.
  What the Israelis seized were anti-tank missiles, rocket-propelled 
grenades, mortars, rockets, all in complete violation of the Oslo 
Accord. All there, as our friend, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Kingston), said, who identified himself as a sportsman, not there for 
sporting purposes, not there for hunting game during the doe season 
with a license from your local State government, but they are to kill 
people. That was the purpose of those weapons.
  And the suicide vest that the gentleman identified a few pictures ago 
was the exact type of vest used in an attempt to kill Gila Weiss and 
that did kill six of the people that she was standing around with, 
total strangers.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. Again, I will try to use some of these posters today, 
but this again is a sample of literally weapons, just a fraction of the 
weapons collected that could fill this Chamber, machine guns, sniper 
rifles, mortar guns, anti-tank weapons, none of which were allowed 
under the Oslo agreement.
  Mr. WEINER. If the gentleman would yield for a question. Perhaps you 
can offer a little bit more explanation.
  One of things that came up frequently on the floor among the 
opponents of the resolution was that we have to foster an environment 
where the moderate Arab nations could help a peace take hold in the 
Middle East. Perhaps the gentleman could explain to the Members where 
those weapons came from. Did they not come from a so-called moderate 
Arab state? And I am curious as to whether it seems like the export of 
someone who is interested in peace in the region.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. As we reviewed them, we asked exactly those questions. 
Some of them were stolen Israeli weapons. Some of them were American 
weapons stolen or gotten through a third party. A lot of them were 
smuggled either through the tunnels from the Sinai into Gaza. Some of 
them, Israelis have very good information to believe that they were 
actually smuggled in Yassar Arafat's helicopter. So the weapons came 
from a variety of different sources.
  Mr. WEINER. What about the Karin-A?
  Mr. DEUTSCH. The Karin-A is a totally different issue which we can 
talk about. I think it is a significant issue as well. As the gentleman 
is well aware, the Karin-A was a ship that Israeli commandos captured 
that had $20 million of weapons in it and had some very sophisticated 
weapons right off the shelf from Iran, including rocket launchers, 
rockets, not just mortars but rockets. The equivalents of our TOW 
missiles.
  I actually have some pictures because we reviewed not just the 
weapons, these were weapons that were seized in the West Bank up to 
this point; they were weapons that were literally seized during the 
military incursion. And that in a sense, just these weapons are success 
or proof of the right and the necessity of the incursion because the 
suicide belt we saw in the previous picture, that suicide belt was not 
made to be put in a museum. It literally was made to be used. And the 
capture of that one belt prevented that one belt from being used, and 
we do not know how many lives and how many tragedies, and literally the 
tragedies are each one is as painful as we can possibly imagine in 
terms of human condition.

  Did the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) want to add 
something to that?
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Well, the enormity of this, it is hard to appreciate 
unless you see the weapons. And the great variety, from brand-new 
modern weapons never used before seized from the Karin-A with an 
attempt to smuggle them in from Iran, to old battered, well-worn 
weapons that the Palestinians have obviously been using for years and 
years to homemade weapons, weapons made with sections of water pipe and 
slingshots for the firing pins to set off the ammunition put in these 
homemade weapons. An absolutely staggering

[[Page H2446]]

commitment to mayhem, to using violent means to try to win their 
political goals.
  The enormity of the terror is hard to grasp unless you see the 
weapons, unless you talk to the families of the victims, unless you see 
the locations of the terror bombings in Jerusalem as we did on our 
walking tour. And when we hear the stories of the families and the 
human tragedies of innocents dying, not soldiers dying in combat for 
their country but innocents.
  We have heard the story of Michal and Malka, two 15-year-old friends, 
inseparable, went to school together, lived next door to each other, 
had known each other since both were babies, 15 years old. They snuck 
off to get some pizza last August at the Sbarro restaurant in downtown 
Jerusalem and got blown to kingdom come. Their parents buried them side 
by side where they will rest forever.
  That is hard to understand. It is hard to appreciate the horror for 
those families and hard to understand how anybody can justify such 
action. You can have the world's most difficult grievance; you can be 
really ticked off about something, and feel that the other guy is 
causing you a lot of aggravation, but how can you ever justify 
murdering innocent civilians?
  Mr. WEINER. If the gentleman will yield, there is a broader political 
point here as well. And that is the Israelis have arguably tried 
everything under the sun to deter these kinds of attacks. That did not 
work. Now they are doing what they can to respond.
  Some in the Chamber last week or 10 days ago in arguing against the 
resolution said perhaps we should recognize the grievance of the 
suicide bomber, sit down at the table and negotiate with them.
  What lesson does that send to the next guy who is going to fly a 
plane into a tall building in the United States? What lesson does that 
teach the person who is sitting at home in Nablus or in Jenin about 
whether or not they should go and take up violence, not only against 
Israel but against the United States or anyone else with whom they 
might have a grievance.
  We have to be very careful when we do what sometimes happens in the 
State Department here in the United States and we offer this sense of 
we kind of understand where they are coming from when they blow up a 
bunch of children in a shopping center. I believe we embolden further 
attacks. I believe we make it steadily, piece by piece, part of the 
political debate. It was truly mindboggling for me to listen to it. And 
we should stress very few Members of this Chamber, the gentleman showed 
pictures of his visit to Democrats, to Republicans, overwhelmingly from 
all regions of this country, this House and stood up and said we 
understand what Israel is facing. We support her in perhaps one of the 
strongest pro-Israel resolutions this House has ever passed.
  Imagine for a moment if we did it. Imagine if we were a little more 
lukewarm and said, maybe we see the beef that the Palestinians have 
when they engage in suicide bombings. That creates more violence. I 
remember distinctly in June of 2001, Tel Aviv discoteque bombing. 
Horrific event. Someone gets in line at a discoteque on a Saturday 
night, teenagers all around, blows themselves up, blows up over a dozen 
young people around them. Quickly the United States, even the European 
community, which has never been very friendly to Israel, editorial 
pages everywhere said how outrageous, how disgusting it truly was. What 
happened? Israel did not respond immediately, and the Palestinians also 
recognized, you know what, we have gone too far. We are no longer 
getting sympathy and now people are recognizing how bloodthirsty we 
appear to be. It created a week, maybe 10 days of quiet.
  When we strongly condemn these things, when we do not prevaricate, 
when we do not equivocate, when we do not draw these lines of 
equivalency that somehow justify the lines of terrorism, we save lives. 
That is something people have to understand. When they stand here, it 
almost sounds as if they are justifying the violence. In the quotes 
that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch) read, I think it really 
does embolden some 15-year-old young person to say, maybe this is the 
way I will get my meaning; and they will be the next homicide bomber. 
As we have seen from these weapons, and I have said it on this floor 
before, this is a problem for Israel, true. But just the way a katusha 
rocket can shoot down an El Al plane, it can shoot down a Continental 
Airlines plane, God forbid, or a U.S. Airlines plane, God forbid.

  The same people who are getting these weapons, because they think 
murder is a way to get their means, believe me, we are not miles and 
miles away as we learned on September 11.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. Let me read, these are different Members, every quote so 
far this evening has been from a different Member. I will read from 
another Member: ``We in this body have a constitutional responsibility 
to protect the national security of the United States. This one-sided 
intervention in a far-off war has the potential to do great harm to our 
national security.''
  I think that is exactly the point that the gentleman is making. That 
if someone is saying that, what is the implication, that there really 
is a duality, that there is both sides? And I think what was said is 
that for an act of terror, an act of killing innocents there are no two 
sides.
  This is just a follow-up. Literally just another pick of weapons 
seized and there are more and there are more and there are more. The 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner) asked just a comment on the Karin-
A issue, and I thought since it is a relevant event, in a sense it was 
not directly tied to the incursion, but it gives a sense of the context 
to the Palestinian Authority and Yassar Arafat personally.
  The weapons on the Karin-A were $20 million of weapons but literally 
weapons off the shelf of munitions factories in Iran. Mortars, as we 
see, large mortars of different dimensions for different distances, 
rockets, the equivalent of the United States TOW missiles, which are 
missiles that can be shot and steered after they are shot, anti-tank 
weapons that were made out of plastic so they cannot be detected, a 
very sophisticated operation that the United States and the Israelis 
and the world has not denied that Yassar Arafat's direct involvement in 
the purchase and the logistics of these weapons.
  The sophistication of the weapons in a sense is highlighted by this 
container. All of the weapons that were seized on the Karin-A were 
actually in containers like this, which are water-tight containers. In 
fact, some of the weapons were actually modified so that they could fit 
inside these containers. And the containers themselves were very 
sophisticated in that they had a specially built compressed-air-water 
compartment that would actually be able to have the containers set at a 
certain depth in the Mediterranean Sea so they could then be picked up 
later on with this buoy attachment. And that in fact could have 
escalated the conflict dramatically. Every weapon there was in 
violation of Oslo. Every weapon that was there was in violation of 
Oslo.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I could not agree 
more. The violation of law and the agreement represented by these 
weapons really goes a long way towards showing the attitude of the 
Palestinians toward the agreement that they made and their intention 
for their future use in the Middle East.
  The other thing that was quite persuasive to our group were the 
documents that the Israelis seized from the Palestinian Authority 
offices in the West Bank during the military incursion. Documents were 
seized in Arabic showing how the terrorists are funded, showing how the 
Saudis make payments to the terrorists and the families of terrorists, 
showing how Yassar Arafat's organization submits memos to him 
recommending that payments be made to a list of what they 
euphemistically call ``freedom fighters.'' That would be in American 
English ``terrorists.'' And how Yassar Arafat signs off on those memos 
asking for certain levels of funding.

                              {time}  2215

  In most cases he reduces the payments to be made to each individual, 
but there are signed documents showing to my satisfaction certainly, 
that Arafat has been directing terror. Certainly through the Fatah 
organization, the Tanzim and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades that he commands 
as head of Fatah, and these documents and the

[[Page H2447]]

gentleman has a picture up, and I would yield back to the gentleman in 
just a second, the documents plus the seized weapons certainly make 
clear to me that Yasser Arafat has been directing terror in the Middle 
East.
  I am happy to yield back to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch).
  Mr. DEUTSCH. Mr. Speaker, I think the issue of the day and I think in 
a sense maybe if we move beyond the resolution and I think in a sense 
we have debated against the empty seat and we have debated 
successfully.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Would the gentleman agree we won the debate?
  Mr. DEUTSCH. Mr. Speaker, I think in the environment we are at we won 
when we entered the Chamber and I think it is important, and I hope 
there is a discourse because clearly a number of our colleagues, again 
less than around 10 percent or so, articulated a position which I am 
just disappointed, and I think it is by lack of information, it is a 
lack of thought, lack of really thinking through the actual conditions 
of what occurred.
  We would not talk about moral equivalency with the United States war 
in Afghanistan, and the similarity parallels are very real in terms of 
what the Israelis are doing, and as we both have said, there should be 
a Yasser Arafat exemption to the war on terrorism?
  I would like to follow up though, and really, the issue of the day is 
should the Israelis continue to negotiate with Yasser Arafat? Is he the 
negotiating partner to try to get to the resolution of the conflict, 
and as the gentleman said, not only did the Israelis seize a huge 
amount of sophisticated weapons in their incursions and suicide belts 
and other things, but a huge amount of documents, which at this point 
in time no one is refuting the authenticity.
  In fact, we met the parents of a soldier who actually downloaded some 
of the documents and was killed in a subsequent action, and he told his 
parents about it. So I do not think there was a scam of him telling his 
parents about what he did.
  No one at this point is really questioning literally the authenticity 
of the document that is blown up on this chart and in Yasser Arafat's 
handwriting, which again no one is questioning at this point in time, 
is exactly what the gentleman described. It is a request to Yasser 
Arafat from a senior Fatah activist, Hassan al Sheik, for payments of 
$2,500 for three known terrorists. I mean, people who are on Israel's 
most wanted list who the Israelis knew were involved in previous 
terrorist actions, in fact, through the Israelis, subsequently 
eliminated, and a request for $2,500. Chairman Arafat, as my colleague 
had mentioned, says allocate $600 to each of them in his own 
handwriting directly involved in that payment.
  There are other documents. This is a longer list of 12 people who 
were involved in terrorist activities and for this group, I do not see 
the exact amount, but again, with Arafat's signature, it is a $350 
payment for terrorist activities.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, let me ask the gentleman, does he think 
those payments are for putting a roof on Arafat's house?
  Mr. DEUTSCH. I think what is clear is they are what they are.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Can there be any question about what those payments are 
authorized for, what the purpose behind them is?
  Mr. DEUTSCH. They are what they are. Arafat, he was not a terrorist 
10 years ago or 5 years ago or a year. He is still a terrorist. He was 
engaged in terrorist activity continuously, and his words might sound 
nice at this point in time, but it is not ancient history to go back.
  Here is a document, a request from the Al Aqsa Martyr troops for 
money to the Palestinian Authority, and as shocking as each of the 
things are in terms of weapons, in terms of posters for suicide 
bombers, there is a specific request for 700 shekels, and I am reading 
it directly, this is for detonators for suicide bombers. We need every 
week five to nine explosive charges. Five to nine explosive charges 
every week, 700 shekels per week, directly to the PA by Al Aqsa Martyrs 
Brigade, people who are literally perpetrating the suicide bombs.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, the documents do indeed speak for 
themselves and leave one just no choice but to conclude that Yasser 
Arafat has directed terror, that he has in the past and he presently 
is, and the question is for this House, for this country what needs to 
be done in order to stop this activity.
  It seems to me, I know the gentleman and I have discussed this, that 
there must be a recognition that Arafat, other Palestinians and the 
leaders of the Arab league must declare that terror must be renounced, 
that violence must be renounced and they must do this in word and deed. 
They have done it in word, but the documents that the gentleman has and 
the photographs of the weapons indicate that indeed they are still 
involved in terror and in financing terror.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. This is going to be the last document and there is more, 
but this is dated March 24, 2002, and during the stage of these 
operations, and this is a copy of minutes of a meeting at the Ramallah 
headquarters, and Chairman Arafat is in attendance at this meeting 
along with Hamas, and the statements in the minutes of the meeting in 
Arabic are such that Chairman Arafat is upset that there was a bombing 
inside the green line when General Zinni was in Israel, and the 
inference is they would have preferred the bombing outside the green 
line and not when General Zinni was in Israel.
  The Israelis did not write this. No one is questioning the 
authenticity. This is Arafat inside his own meetings, meeting with 
Hamas, talking about terrorist activity, not trying to prevent them at 
any level in any way, and we could ignore this if we want to ignore it, 
but the weight is so overwhelming at this point that it is unignorable.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is entirely correct, and it 
seems to me that we need to make clear that both the United States and 
the government of Israel need to have someone to talk to representing 
the Palestinians that clearly renounces violence, that renounces 
violence and terror and that does so in word and deed and who, 
secondly, clearly recognizes the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish 
state, not as a state that someday may have a Palestinian majority 
because of the demographics, but a state that is recognized as a Jewish 
state with a full right to exist in peace and security.
  Until we get those two commitments, a complete renunciation of 
violence and terror and a recognition of Israel to exist as a Jewish 
state, I do not see how we can go forward. I do not see how the 
Israelis can go forward in furthering the peace process when there is 
literally nobody to talk to presently on the other side that has any 
credibility whatsoever.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. The gentleman is so on point with that comment. That is 
one of the tragedies going on right now. In fact, one of the tragedies 
I think as we both saw is as horrific and awful and inhumane the 
Palestinian attacks on Israelis have been, both Jews and Arabs, and we 
made a point as we have talked about to visit Arab dictums of terrorist 
bombings. In fact, the restaurant we talked about in Haifa was owned by 
an Arab Israeli and about half the victims were Arabs, not Jews, Arabs 
and Jews. The screws and the nuts and the ball bearings do not 
discriminate and, too, they are going to maim and kill.
  The reality of how bad and awful that is, Yasser Arafat and the 
Palestinian Authority have been as bad and maybe even worse to their 
own people, indiscriminately killing people in just no type of civil 
process at all, destruction of an economy, corruption at levels which 
is untold, probably unmatched almost maybe anywhere in the world the 
level of corruption, and that in a sense is the entity that the United 
States is supporting.
  What we have talked about on this floor previously, there is no, and 
we use the expression, there is no daylight between any Members of this 
Congress and the President and the war on terrorism and the efforts in 
Afghanistan, the efforts to stop terrorists with global reach whether 
they be in Iraq, in Syria or North Korea. There is no daylight between 
us, but I think there are many in this Chamber, in this country 
unfortunately who disagree with some of the President's actions in 
terms of trying to say, well, Yasser Arafat and these activities really 
are not as evil as they are.

[[Page H2448]]

  One of the great things about President Reagan was when there was an 
evil empire he called it an evil empire and the Palestinian Authority 
is an evil empire, and we can call it white and we can call it black. 
If we call black, white, it does not make it white, and the same thing 
by saying, the leadership and these other things, the entity itself is 
evil, is corrupt beyond comprehension. We both heard stories that I 
would not say on this floor of some of the activities of the 
Palestinian Authority in terms of some of the behavior of some of the 
leaders that were beyond human discussion.
  Let me follow up, though, just in terms of the Palestinian Authority 
itself. This is a reprint of a New York Times article April 20, 2002, 
and they interviewed a printer in the West Bank who had an ongoing 
contract with the Palestinian Authority to, after every suicide bomber 
who was killed, to automatically within several hours with information 
about that suicide bomber print up 1,000 posters to then be put up. 
This is just a sample form. That is the entity, the glorification of 
the suicide bomber is what we have seen.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. We face the reality of what to do now. There can be 
little doubt regarding the complicity of Arafat in the terror. He is 
continuing to call for martyrdom for the Palestinians, and in the 
lexicon of the Palestinians, one who is a martyr is one who commits 
terror and is willing to die in committing that terror against 
Israelis.
  What the gentleman and I need to do is to urge this House and our 
administration to clearly set out the conditions that need to exist 
before Israel can be expected to go forward, before the United States 
government can be expected to go forward.
  We all want peace. There is no question about it. Even the Members 
that voted against this resolution certainly want peace. There is no 
question about the motivation. The disagreement can be in how to get 
there, but what conditions do we need to set forth?
  I have stated, too, I am sure the gentleman could add, the absolute 
need for the Palestinian leadership and the Arab league leadership to 
renounce terror and to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish 
state.
  I know the gentleman has got additional views on what must happen 
next before we can go forward. I would be happy to yield back.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. Mr. Speaker, I know our time is running out. I want to 
give both of us a couple of seconds to close, and the last two charts 
are directly on point on what the gentleman mentioned.
  Yasser Arafat in the compound spoke about sending a million, the 
English translation is as my colleague so ably pointed out, martyrs to 
Jerusalem. The Arab word is ``shaheed.'' If my colleagues were to ask 
any Palestinian what shaheed means, they know that it means suicide 
bombers. It does not mean martyr. It is not an esoteric, theoretical 
term. It means suicide bombers, and specifically to the people that is 
what they hear.
  As shocking as that is, the quote from Chairman Arafat's wife, 
literally that there would be no greater honor than for her son, if she 
had a son, to be a martyr, to be a shaheed, to be a suicide bomber.
  I would close and give the gentleman an opportunity to close and say 
I wish that we had a discourse this evening with our colleagues who 
voted against this because I do not think there is any articulated, 
rational, moral position against the support of Israel that this 
Congress overwhelmingly and this country has overwhelmingly done.

                              {time}  2230

  Their fight is our fight. The attacks against them are attacks 
against us.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, Mr. Speaker, 
and let me make one more comment.
  As the gentleman from New York said about the misnomer of suicide 
bomber, the phrase suicide bomber suggests one crazed person going off 
into a field and killing themselves with a bomb. We call what is 
happening in Israel the actions of suicide bombers, but in fact they 
are better named homicide bombers because they are not just taking out 
themselves, they are trying to kill as many innocent people as they 
possibly can.
  That is the terror faced by Israel. That is what she has to defend 
herself against. And we can clearly state that Israel has the right to 
self-defense. It is not for us to set a limit on that right. It is up 
to us to support her in her activity, to make sure she survives; and 
she will survive with our support.

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