[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 132 (Thursday, September 8, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H5974-H5975]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 ISRAEL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Engel) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I came back from a trip to Israel, 
and I wanted to share with my colleagues some of the things that are 
going on currently in the Middle East and some of the things that will 
happen within the next couple of weeks.
  First of all, it's always a pleasure to visit Israel, the only 
democracy in the Middle East. It's a pleasure to watch. Last Saturday 
night there were demonstrations throughout Israel, the young people, in 
the democratic way, voicing their feelings about important issues, just 
like we do here in the United States, and the people in Israel who are 
doing this. In a region where you have governments in Syria killing 
their own people, demonstrations and soldiers firing on people in Libya 
and Egypt, in Israel you have peaceful demonstrations and no fear of 
the police or the military the harming people because Israel is a full-
fledged democracy, just like we are, just like the United States is, 
and it was a pleasure to be in that country.

[[Page H5975]]

                              {time}  1050

  There are several things that are happening during the next few 
weeks, and a number of them are at the United Nations in my home city 
in New York.
  The Palestinian leadership has decided that it will go to the United 
Nations to try to get a declaration of statehood. Now, that is 
something that I believe, and any reasonable person believes, should be 
decided in face-to-face negotiations between Israel and the 
Palestinians.
  In any dispute anywhere in the world, the only way that you can 
resolve the issue is if the two adversaries sit down and hammer out the 
issues--not by going to the United Nations, which is, frankly, a 
kangaroo court against Israel. There are so many resolutions that get 
passed year in and year out against Israel. Israel can never have a 
fair shake.
  And thinking the Palestinians are thinking that if they go there 
somehow or other they will have a state, in reality it will make it 
even worse.
  Because what happens is if the United Nations declares a Palestinian 
state, that shows that there need not be any negotiations. And down the 
line, the Palestinian leadership will not be able to settle for 
anything less than what the resolution says. And no Israeli government, 
frankly, can agree to what a likely resolution is likely to say. And it 
will set back the cause of negotiation and the cause of peace even 
greater.
  So I would say to the countries of the United Nations not to do a 
knee-jerk reaction, but to think about what will really bring peace to 
the region. A two-state solution, which I support--a Palestinian state 
and Israel living side by side in peace--that is what we want. And I 
should say the Jewish State of Israel and an Arab-Palestinian state 
living side-by-side in peace.
  If the Palestinians truly want peace, they can get it. They can get 
it by face-to-face negotiations, not by running to the United Nations 
and having a resolution that will set back the cause of peace for many, 
many years to come.
  Now, another thing that's happened in the region has been frankly the 
belligerence of Turkey with Israel. Turkey is a NATO nation, but for 
some reason the leadership in Turkey has decided that they want to look 
away from democracy. They want to look towards Iran and towards the 
Middle East. So they have become increasingly hostile towards Israel.
  And we have, of course, the flotilla incident where Israel has a 
blockade of Gaza because the Hamas terrorist organization is in Gaza 
and in control of Gaza, and Israel has to be very, very sure that it 
protects its citizens from terrorism. We have had rockets and rockets 
and rocket barrages fired into Israel from Gaza, Israeli citizens being 
killed. No country would ever allow that to happen.
  If we had a situation where terrorists were firing missiles at us 
from any of the border countries, Mexico or Canada, we wouldn't stand 
for it for a second. We would go in and clean out the terrorists that 
are threatening our civilian population.
  Israel has the absolute right to do that. And the United Nations, in 
a rare instance where it agreed with Israel, just came out with a 
report saying that the Israeli blockade of Gaza to prevent weapons and 
weaponry from killing Israeli citizens was legal.
  So of course we had the flotilla. It came from Turkey. And there was 
an incident that they were trying to break the blockade. And there was 
an incident. And of course what happened with it was the people were 
killed. And Turkey has used that as an excuse to be belligerent against 
Israel.
  I would say to Turkey they ought to stop the nonsense, act more like 
a NATO country, and act more like a country that wants to go into the 
European Union, not a country that is sympathetic to extremism and not 
a country that is saying the most belligerent things. Just tone down 
and scale back its diplomatic recognition with Israel. I ask Turkey to 
act like a NATO nation.

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