[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 18 (Wednesday, January 31, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S301-S303]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  Gaza

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise tonight to talk about the 
extraordinarily challenging humanitarian situation in Gaza. And let's 
begin with October 7.
  Israel has every right to eliminate the military threat of Hamas, to 
go after Hamas terrorists who conducted a horrific attack on Israel 
October 7.
  But how the Netanyahu government wages that war matters. And how they 
have done so is deeply disturbing to millions of Americans, and it is 
deeply disturbing to me.
  Hamas is the enemy. Palestinian civilians are not the enemy.
  Earlier this month, Senator Van Hollen and I visited the Rafah 
Crossing on the border between Egypt and Gaza. We spoke with aid 
workers who had served in the worst conflict zones in the world, from 
Syria to Sudan to Yemen, including one worker who had spent several 
months working on the frontline in Ukraine. Each told us that they had 
never witnessed a humanitarian disaster on the scale or severity of 
Gaza.
  In Gaza, calamity after calamity multiplies the suffering. It is not 
just a shortage of food. It is a shortage of food; it is contaminated 
water; it is massive displacement; it is continuous bombing and 
shelling; it has destroyed hospitals and other hospitals that 
desperately need drugs and medical supplies; it is communication 
failures due to damage and communication failures due to blackouts.
  As of today, more than 26,000 Palestinian civilians are dead. It is 
estimated that 70 percent are women and children--some 18,000 women and 
children. It is really an unfathomable number.
  But let's try to put some perspective on that. If 18,000 women and 
children were lined up holding hands, they would form a line over 13 
miles long. Or if you spent 1 minute with each child and woman--18,000 
women and children--it would take you more than 300 hours to visit or 
connect with each of them--12 days.
  In addition to the 26,000 Palestinian civilians who are dead, an 
estimated 65,000 Palestinians are wounded.
  Of Gaza's 2.3 million people, 1.7 million are eternally displaced--
over 70,000 homes destroyed. Those who are told to leave the north for 
the safety of the south are now often bombed or shelled in the 
locations they were encouraged to go to. There is no guaranteed safe 
place in Gaza. Even designated U.N. shelters have come under attack.
  When thinking about food, 90 percent of Palestinians are living on 
less than one meal a day--one meal a day. Only one of the three clean 
drinking water pipelines from Israel is functioning. And water 
filtration equipment has been repeatedly turned away by Israeli 
inspectors, as I saw for myself in Rafah.
  Just 14 of 36 hospitals are still operating, and those hospitals lack 
basic medical supplies and even lack food.
  One doctor who came out of Gaza talked to me about the 
extraordinarily deep wounds--burns--caused by white phosphorus, and he 
showed me pictures of those wounds. Another talked to me about--he was 
an orthopedic surgeon. He fixed broken bones, but he said he couldn't 
believe how many bones had been shattered by the blasts and how much 
untreatable trauma there was to individuals' internal organs. UNICEF 
estimates at least 1,000 children have had arms or legs amputated, many 
without anesthesia.
  New mothers have been profoundly impacted. More mothers are having 
miscarriages. More mothers are having stillbirths. More mothers are 
anemic and suffering postpartum hemorrhaging. More mothers are 
undernourished and cannot breastfeed, and yet finding clean water and 
formula is extremely difficult. More mothers are enduring C-section 
surgeries without anesthesia.
  Let me say it again: Israel has every right to go after Hamas. Hamas 
is Israel's enemy. The Palestinian people are not their enemy, and they 
are not our enemy. So we should be disconcerted, we should be 
staggered, we should be horrified by the extraordinary level of 
civilian deaths and injuries and the humanitarian challenges I have 
described with food and water and medicine.
  President Biden has called the bombing ``indiscriminate'' and urged 
the Netanyahu government to adopt a much more targeted war strategy. 
This message has been repeated by Secretary of State Blinken. This 
message has been repeated by Secretary of Defense Austin. These 
messages have been repeated with increasing intensity. But the 
Netanyahu government has rejected these requests.
  President Biden has called for Israel to vastly increase humanitarian 
aid to afflicted Palestinian civilians, but the Netanyahu government 
has also rejected that request. The suffering is growing with each 
passing day. So what has prevented a massive influx of aid needed to 
address the humanitarian conditions in Gaza? Before October 7, 500 
trucks a day went into Gaza. Why can't 500 trucks a day go into Gaza 
carrying that needed humanitarian aid--food, water, and medical 
supplies?
  In short, Israel has done two things: They have set up a complex and 
inefficient inspection process post-October 7 that restricts aid from 
entering Gaza. And, second, once aid is into Gaza, there isn't a 
deconfliction process that makes it possible to deliver aid safely.
  Into more detail now about how that inspection process works. Senator 
Van Hollen and I witnessed the burdensome inspection process firsthand 
at the Rafah checkpoint. The inspection process can take more than a 
week from the time a driver loads a truck until that driver can deliver 
that aid into Gaza. We witnessed hundreds of trucks lined up on the 
highway in Egypt, mile after mile of trucks. They were filled with 
food, water, and medical supplies, sitting on the side of the highway. 
Some of them were waiting for permission to go to Israel, to Nitzana, 
for inspection. And some of them had been inspected in Nitzana and sent 
back to Rafah to await final permission to enter into Gaza. The 
challenge, when you think about a truck, is it should be able to load 
up its supplies, be inspected, and deliver those supplies in the same 
day, not a process that takes over a week.
  Let's think about that process for a moment. Israel is appropriately 
trying to stop dual-use items from entering into Gaza, and so there is 
a preapproval process between the suppliers and the Israeli Government. 
That is appropriate. But then, when things are approved and trucks 
arrive at Nitzana, they are often told by the person inspecting: No, we 
are not allowing that to go in.

[[Page S302]]

  Maybe the tent pole is too long, or in one case, medical kits for 
birthing children had scalpels. A scalpel is a sharp blade, and they 
were rejected. That inconsistently greatly complicates delivery, and it 
includes the fact that if anything in the load is rejected, the entire 
truck is rejected, and it starts the process all over again.
  Items that are allowed in one day can be rejected the next. Senator 
Van Hollen and I visited a warehouse full of those rejected items, and 
they were the things that you would expect for delivery for 
humanitarian aid. There were water-testing kits. There were medical 
supplies. There was other desperately needed equipment.
  Once trucks make it through one of the two gates--Kerem Shalom from 
Israel or Rafah Crossing from Egypt--then they face the second problem, 
the problem of deconfliction or the lack thereof of deconfliction, so 
that drivers face a terrifying gauntlet of damaged roads and falling 
bombs and artillery shells.
  The failure to set up deconfliction that allows this aid to be 
delivered safely is unacceptable, and there is only one government that 
can set up that deconfliction process, and that is the Netanyahu 
government.
  More than 150 U.N. workers have been killed in Gaza so far--the 
largest loss of life in the history of the United Nations. More than 
300 additional healthcare workers have been killed. Due to injuries and 
displacement, the U.N. humanitarian workforce, which was 13,000 strong 
in Gaza on October 6, has been reduced to 3,000 workers. The rest are 
injured or killed or refugees within Gaza itself.
  Only the Netanyahu government has the power to establish an 
organized, efficient inspection process. Only the Netanyahu government 
has the power to enforce deconfliction protocols. This double failure 
has stymied the delivery of sufficient humanitarian aid, unnecessarily 
deepening the suffering of Palestinian civilians.
  Now, delivery of aid faces an additional problem. The Netanyahu 
government has produced information showing that at least 12 U.N. 
workers may have been involved in the October 7 terrorist attack on 
Israel. This is, for sure, deeply troubling. That is 12 workers out of 
a workforce that counted 13,000, but it is troubling. It is completely 
against the principles in which the U.N. Relief and Works Agency 
functions.
  The United States has appropriately paused assistance to UNRWA 
pending an investigation, and I welcome that these individuals were 
immediately terminated. They certainly don't represent the thousands of 
men and women who work for UNRWA and bravely serve vulnerable people 
day in and day out in some of the most dangerous settings around the 
world.
  I look forward to a swift and thorough investigation to ensure 
accountability so that U.S. assistance can promptly resume, that the 
entire humanitarian assistance program can continue.
  Wish though we might, there is no immediate way to replace that UNRWA 
workforce--now down to 3,000 workers but essential 3,000 workers--to 
deliver the aid that does make it into Gaza. It can't be replaced 
overnight by any other international organization.
  It is the Netanyahu government that has chosen a war strategy against 
Hamas that has killed a breathtaking, shocking, unacceptable number of 
Palestinian civilians. It is the Netanyahu government that has 
preserved a complicated and inefficient inspection system and a failed 
deconfliction process that severely limited humanitarian aid to 
innocent civilians.
  But let me be clear. The United States shares the responsibility for 
these failures. We, the United States of America, are Israel's major 
partner in supplying economic aid. We, the United States, are Israel's 
major partner in supplying military aid. We, the United States, have 
resupplied Israel with bombs and artillery shells--bombs and artillery 
shells of the types that have caused many of the civilian deaths.
  The world looks at our close partnership and expects the United 
States to do more than ``request'' that the Netanyahu government adopt 
a more targeted strategy against Hamas to reduce civilian deaths and 
injuries. The world expects the United States to do more than 
``request'' that the Netanyahu government fix the inspection and 
deconfliction process to greatly increase the flow of humanitarian aid. 
No matter how often we ``request,'' no matter how intensely we 
``request,'' simply requesting hasn't worked. The world expects the 
United States to use our influence that comes with being Israel's 
closest partner to reduce the civilian carnage and vastly increase the 
humanitarian aid.
  President Biden and his team have operated for 3\1/2\ months under 
plan A. Plan A made sense in the context of our longstanding 
relationship. Plan A was to make requests, make them more clearly, make 
them repeatedly, make them more intently, but not use any other 
significant leverage for change. Plan A, now over 100 days in 
operation, has failed, so it is time that the United States move in a 
bolder fashion. Let's call it plan B.
  Provision 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act reads:

       No assistance shall be furnished under this Act or the Arms 
     Export Control Act to any country when it is made known to 
     the President [of the United States] that the government of 
     such country prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or 
     indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States 
     humanitarian assistance.

  Well, Senator Van Hollen and I certainly saw for ourselves the 
restrictions on the delivery of aid that the Netanyahu government has 
sustained for 100 days, a convoluted inspection policy, and a broken 
deconfliction process.
  Section 620I is American law. It enables the President of the United 
States to tell Prime Minister Netanyahu: We are not allowed by law to 
provide another dollar of aid as long as you are restricting 
humanitarian aid into Gaza through these broken deconfliction processes 
and complicated, convoluted inspection processes.
  So President Biden has leverage. He is bound by American law. All he 
has to do is make it clear that that is leverage that he is bound to 
follow, that is a law he is bound to follow. As long as the Netanyahu 
government restricts the delivery of humanitarian aid, the United 
States cannot legally deliver financial or military aid to Israel under 
provision 620I of U.S. public law.
  And the President should do more. Our President should do more. He 
should make it clear that as long as the Netanyahu government delivers 
insufficient humanitarian aid to Gaza, the United States is going to 
provide aid directly--directly provide food, water, and medical aid to 
the Palestinian people in Gaza.
  It is time for the United States to use American ships and 
helicopters to provide medical supplies to every one of Gaza's 
remaining 14 hospitals. We must move swiftly to eliminate the shortages 
of anesthesia and antibiotics and any other shortfall of medicine or 
medical supplies. Picture American helicopters delivering to those 14 
hospitals.
  Never again should a woman delivering a child in Gaza go through a C-
section without anesthesia. Never again should a child having an arm or 
leg amputated because it is shattered or it is full of gangrene have it 
done without anesthesia. Never again should these medical procedures 
occur without antibiotics. The United States can deliver and is morally 
bound to address this shortfall of medical aid.
  It is also time for our team, our President, to say to Team 
Netanyahu, to say to his government, that if the Netanyahu government 
cannot or will not ensure that sufficient food and water are supplied 
to civilians in Gaza, the United States will ensure, and we will use 
our ships and our ship-to-shore assets to supply food and water to Gaza 
directly, which, fortunately, has a 40-mile coastline that greatly 
facilitates that type of supply.
  We, the United States, as the major partner with Israel through 
financial aid and military aid, are inextricably linked to the 
humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The United States, as Israel's supplier, 
is complicit now in the suffering of the people in Gaza. This 
complicity must end. President Biden must use the leverage and power of 
the United States to address the suffering of Palestinian civilians in 
Gaza--to deliver medical supplies, to deliver food, to deliver clean 
water.
  Let me step back and repaint this picture once again. More than 
26,000 Palestinians are dead. That includes

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more than 18,000 women and children. More than 65,000 Palestinians have 
been injured, and 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza have been driven 
from their homes. Ninety percent of Palestinians in Gaza are surviving 
on less than a meal per day. The supply of clean water is woefully 
insufficient. Medicines are in desperately short supply.
  As we ponder this, we must realize that we must value the life of 
every child the same, no matter who they are or where they call home. 
If we keep that in mind, we will find the right answer to the enormous 
suffering in Gaza.
  The Palestinian people are not Israel's enemy. The Palestinian people 
are not America's enemy. The United States must end our complicity in 
this humanitarian catastrophe. The United States must pivot from simply 
``requesting'' that the Netanyahu government fix the inspection and 
deconfliction processes that are restricting humanitarian aid to using 
every asset at our disposal to directly deliver a massive amount of 
humanitarian aid into Gaza. We must act boldly. We must act swiftly. To 
do otherwise is completely unacceptable and immoral. The United States 
must act now.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.