[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 37 (Monday, March 15, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H1414-H1415]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE U.S.-ISRAEL RELATIONSHIP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ENGEL. Madam Speaker, I rise this evening to reaffirm the 
strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Both of our countries have 
shared values. Both of our countries are democracies. Israel is the 
only democracy in the Middle East. I know there have been some 
difficulties during the past few days.
  When Vice President Biden visited Israel, there was an announcement 
of the expansion of a neighborhood in North Jerusalem. The timing of 
that announcement was wrong, but I don't think that we should blow the 
timing of that announcement out of proportion. We should not have a 
disproportionate response to Israel. We need to be careful and measured 
in our response, and I think we all have to take a step back.
  The relationship remains rock solid. The Obama administration and the 
administration of Prime Minister Netanyahu have been cooperating on a 
number of things: containing Iran, the Goldstone Report, and making 
sure that Israel retains its qualitative military edge in the region. 
And there has been good cooperation between our two administrations, 
the Obama administration and the Netanyahu administration. But to seem 
to question the very nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship and to put 
it in personal terms in a very public way will not contribute to peace 
in the Middle East. Rather, it's the contrary. It will cause the 
Palestinians to dig in their heels, thinking that the Americans can 
just deliver the Israelis.

  Last year, when there was public pressure being put on Israel not to 
expand settlements, there was no simultaneous public pressure being put 
on the Palestinians, and we saw that the Palestinian President Mahmoud 
Abbas just sat back, didn't make any concessions, didn't say that he 
would do anything positively to further peace talks, and just thought 
that the United States would wring concessions out of Israel.
  The fact of the matter is that the Israelis have been welcoming peace 
talks with the Palestinians. The Israelis have said they would sit down 
and have face-to-face talks for peace with the Palestinians. That's 
what you do when you have peace. Instead, the Palestinians have refused 
to sit with the Israelis, and Senator Mitchell is proposing to shuttle 
back and forth between the Palestinian side and the Israeli side to 
have negotiations, but not direct negotiations.
  We need to be careful. If we criticize Israel for doing what we think 
was

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wrong, then we need to also criticize the Palestinians when they do 
things wrong. Just recently, the Palestinians named a square in 
Ramallah for a terrorist who killed 30-some-odd Israelis. I didn't hear 
any criticism of the Palestinian side. When the Palestinians dig in 
their heels and say they won't recognize Israel as a Jewish state, I 
didn't hear any criticism of Palestinians.
  So all I am saying, Madam Speaker, is that we need to not only 
reaffirm the strength of our ties between our two countries, but we 
also need to understand that in a relationship between friends, as in 
family, there will be some disagreements. We need to be careful about 
how we voice those disagreements in public.
  Let me say that harsh words are never a replacement for working 
together, but I think that harsh words can sometimes make us understand 
that only by working together can we confront the things that we both 
know need to be confronted--the scourge of terrorism, the thing that 
all nations understand emanates in the Middle East from radical forces, 
and those are the kinds of fights that Israel has every single day 
fighting terrorism. We learned about terrorism on this soil on 9/11. 
Israel has to deal with it every day.
  So let me just say in conclusion that I think we need to take a step 
back. We need to reaffirm all the things that bring our two countries 
together. We in the United States understand that our best friend in 
the Middle East is Israel, and we need to continue with Israel. When we 
have disagreements, we have to talk about them, but we have to always 
understand that only by working together can we have peace in the 
Middle East.

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