[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 35 (Tuesday, February 27, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1015-S1017]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SUPPLEMENTAL FUNDING
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, for some reason that I do not fully
understand, it always appears to me that the more important the issue,
the less it gets discussed here in the Congress and in the media--more
important, less discussion.
And today I want to say a few words about one of those issues, and
that is the ongoing and unprecedented humanitarian disaster which is
taking place in Gaza and which is getting worse every single day.
On October 7, as I think we all know, Hamas established and went
forward with a brutal terrorist attack against Israel killing 1,200
innocent people and took 230 hostages, some 100 of them are still in
captivity. And in my view as I said many times, Israel had a right to
respond to that attack and go after Hamas.
But what Israel did not have the right to do and does not have the
right to do is to go to war against the entire Palestinian people,
which is exactly what has occurred.
When I talk about issues that we in Congress do not fully engage in,
discuss, appreciate, what we are talking about is that in Gaza right
now some 30,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 70,000 have
been injured since that war began. This is a country, an area, of 2.2
million people. Two-thirds of those who have been killed or injured are
women and children.
Unbelievably, and I think this is another point that is not discussed
very often--1.7 million Palestinians, 80 percent of the population--80
percent of the population of Gaza has been driven from their homes. The
men, women, and children have been driven from their homes with no safe
place to go and no idea as to whether or not they will ever return to
their communities.
Imagine that for a moment. Little kids 5 years old, 3 years old--they
don't know what is going on. Bombs falling, pushed out of their homes,
they don't know where they are going or whether, in fact, they will
ever, ever return to their communities.
The bombing of Gaza--and again it must be talked about over and over
again--is almost unprecedented in modern history. Seventy percent of
the housing units in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. Let me repeat
that. Seventy percent of the housing units in Gaza have been damaged or
destroyed. The civilian infrastructure of Gaza has been devastated.
There is virtually no electricity. There are few supplies of clean
water. There is not one functional hospital for 2.2 million residents
of Gaza.
There is not enough food, not enough water, not enough fuel, and not
enough medicine. And increasingly for the people of Gaza, there is no
hope. This is the horrific reality. And I know here in
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the Senate we deal with a lot of stuff, but this is the reality that
cannot be ignored. It must be dealt with. The catastrophe unfolding in
Gaza today, right now as we speak, is among the worst humanitarian
disasters in modern history. And while this body was in recess--we had
a 2-week break. While we were safely with our families, the urgency of
this crisis only increased. We are truly approaching a point of no
return.
For months, the United Nations and other aid organizations have
warned that the constant bombing and the restrictions on humanitarian
aid entering Gaza raised the risk of famine--of famine and disease.
Two months ago, the U.N. warned that the whole population of Gaza was
hungry--people were going hungry--and that more than half a million
people faced the most severe category of food insecurity. That is fancy
terminology for talking about people in desperate need of food.
Now, today, the worst of those fears are becoming reality. Hundreds
of thousands of children in Gaza, beautiful little kids, are starving
to death. Last week, the World Food Programme reported that nutrition
screenings found that one in six children under the age of 12 in
northern Gaza are acutely malnourished and 3 percent are experiencing
child ``wasting,'' a terrible, terrible term that talks about--that
describes the destruction of human life for kids. These children will
die without urgent treatment. In other words, if all of the aid in the
world came in tomorrow, many hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza
have been permanently damaged.
Malnutrition in children causes cognitive and emotional distress,
physical distress. So let us contemplate that. Let us think about that
for a moment. If nothing changes in the coming weeks, thousands of
children in Gaza will begin to die of starvation and easily preventable
diseases caused by the lack of food, medicine, and clean drinking
water.
Was this a natural catastrophe? Was this a storm? Was this an
earthquake? No. This is a manmade disaster. Already, some 90 percent of
children under 5 in Gaza have one or more infectious diseases,
according to the U.N., and 70 percent have had diarrhea in the past 2
weeks due to the lack of clean drinking water.
This is an urgent humanitarian crisis.
It cannot be ignored. It must be addressed. Without an immediate
humanitarian cease-fire and an urgent--urgent--expansion of the relief
efforts, even more people could end up dying from the lack of basic
supplies than have been killed in the bombing. In other words, what we
are looking at is thousands of people are dying, have died from the
bombs, and now we are going to see more people die from starvation and
diseases as a result of no clean water or sanitation.
Scientists at Johns Hopkins University recently modeled what could
happen over the next 6 months if nothing changes and concluded that
some 85,000 more people could die in Gaza over that period and more
from disease.
We cannot let this disaster continue. Let us be clear--be clear why
this is happening. It is happening because Israel is simply not letting
in enough aid, not enough food, not enough water, not enough medical
supplies, not enough fuel. It is not more complicated than that. This
is a manmade crisis caused by Israel, and it can be changed tomorrow.
Israeli restrictions on aid entering Gaza mean that only a tiny
fraction of the food, water, medicine, and fuel that is needed can get
into Gaza. Even then, once aid gets in, Israeli bombing and military
activities mean that very little of that aid can reach beyond the
immediate area around the Rafah border crossing from Egypt. What that
means is that some of the most desperate areas of Gaza, that in those
areas virtually no aid can get through at all. So it is not only that
aid is not getting in, what aid that is getting in is not going to
those locations where it is needed the most.
Even more distressing, aid convoys have been turned back or fired
upon even after previously clearing their route with the Israeli
military. In other words, the aid people tell the Israeli military
where they are going, and the result of that is they, in fact, get
bombed.
Bottom line. Despite the urgency of this crisis and the growing
starvation of the people of Gaza, humanitarian access has actually
gotten worse--worse--in recent weeks. About 80 trucks per day have
gotten into Gaza over the last 3 weeks, down by roughly 40 percent from
earlier periods.
Before the war, before the homelessness, and before the starvation,
some 500 trucks per day delivered basic necessities into Gaza. Almost
all aid deliveries to northern Gaza have been suspended. The Israeli
Government has rejected most requests for access to the north, and the
situation has become too dangerous for aid to be safely delivered. The
reason that aid delivery has become increasingly dangerous is that the
Israeli military has shown little regard for the safety of humanitarian
operations.
Quite the contrary. Earlier this month, the Israeli military fired on
a U.N. food aid convoy even though it had previously cleared its route
and timing with the Israelis.
And here is something that I hope every American hears--that, up
until now, since this war began, 161 U.N. staff and at least 340 health
workers have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7. In other
words, the people who are trying to help the desperate--the people who
are trying to deliver aid, the people who are trying to provide
healthcare--are being killed in large numbers.
The situation today is obviously desperate and getting more and more
desperate; and as an indication of that desperation, humanitarian aid
trucks that do get through to northern Gaza have been mobbed by
starving people. That is the reality. When a truck manages to get
through, aid is not distributed in an orderly way. Hungry people are
mobbing the trucks to grab food to feed their kids. The U.N.'s leading
expert on access to food, this week, said Israel is intentionally
denying access to food. That is a war crime.
Unbelievably, in the midst of this humanitarian cataclysm, rather
than work to improve coordination with the U.N. and get basic supplies
to Palestinians in the war zone, there has been a concerted attack on
UNRWA, the largest U.N. agency operating in Gaza and the backbone of
the humanitarian aid operation. They are the ones who do the lion's
share of the work in getting humanitarian aid to the civilian
population. UNRWA runs schools, healthcare, water sanitation, and food
assistance for Palestinians in Gaza as well as in the West Bank and the
wider region. Israel has accused 12 UNRWA employees of taking part in
the October 7 attack--12 employees. This is a serious allegation, and
it is being investigated seriously, but you don't starve 2 million
people because of the alleged actions of 12 UNRWA employees out of a
total workforce of 30,000.
Despite UNRWA's indispensable role in addressing this unprecedented
humanitarian disaster, Congress is now considering legislation--Senate-
passed legislation--that would actually prohibit funding for this
agency, which would only make a horrible situation even worse. Children
are starving. People don't have water. People don't have medical
supplies. The agency that historically has done the work of getting aid
out to people is now being unfunded. The U.S. decision to pause its
funding for UNRWA has left the agency at a breaking point. That
decision must be reconsidered immediately.
That brings to us the United States' role in this crisis, because the
point is: We are not just looking at some distant part of the world
where terrible things are happening and we are just learning about it
and we have nothing to do with it. It is quite the contrary. Simply, we
are deeply complicit in the humanitarian disaster and the horror that
is taking place in Gaza today. Most of the bombs and most of the
military equipment that the Israeli Government is using in Gaza is
provided by the United States and subsidized by American taxpayers.
This is not just an Israeli war; this is an American war as well. We
are providing the weapons for Netanyahu to wage this war.
I met earlier today with human rights experts from Amnesty
International. Amnesty researchers have painstakingly documented the
use of U.S. weapons in numerous Israeli strikes that break the
international
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laws of war. Most recently, Amnesty documented four unlawful strikes in
Rafah in December-January that killed at least 95 civilians, including
42 children, and some of those attacks were done with U.S. weapons.
The U.S. has laws on the books intended to prevent these kinds of
human rights violations that are being done with U.S.-provided weapons.
The problem is that we have very rarely enforced them with any country,
and we have never enforced them with Israel. For months, as I think all
of us know, President Biden has been trying to get Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu and his extreme rightwing government to scale back
the indiscriminate bombing. So far, Netanyahu has not changed his
tactics. In fact, humanitarian access has actually deteriorated. The
situation is getting worse. Netanyahu makes polite sounds when U.S.
officials visit him in Israel, and then he proceeds to do exactly what
he wants. And what he wants increasingly seems to be the wholesale
destruction of Gaza.
The United States is now focused on negotiating a cease-fire
agreement that would allow for massive humanitarian aid and the freeing
of the remaining hostages. I desperately hope that this deal comes
together. I trust that all of us want the killing to stop and the
hostages to be freed. But, once again, despite what President Biden is
fighting for, Netanyahu is resisting. It appears that he and his
extreme rightwing government are trying to prolong this war to hold
onto their power and to avoid accountability. President Biden has
repeatedly said that the only viable path to lasting peace and security
for Israelis and Palestinians alike is a two-state solution. I agree.
But, of course, Netanyahu has made it very clear that he is completely
opposed to that outcome, and he has been opposed to that outcome for
his entire political career.
On issue after issue, Prime Minister Netanyahu is deeply opposed to
the goals of the United States. We want civilian life protected; he
doesn't seem to care. We want more aid getting into Gaza; he won't
allow it. We want a two-state solution; he is vigorously opposed. Given
all of that reality--given the fact that with every aspect of this
crisis, Netanyahu disagrees with what the U.S. Government wants to see
happen--it is beyond comprehension as to why the United States is
preparing to send another $10 billion in unrestricted military aid so
that Netanyahu can continue the murderous campaign that we oppose.
Enough is enough. The United States cannot continue to be complicit
in Netanyahu's war crimes. No more military aid for Israel. Whether
Netanyahu likes it or not, the United States must continue working
toward an urgent humanitarian cease-fire to allow for the release of
the hostages and massive influx of humanitarian aid. We should join
other countries all over the world to pass a cease-fire resolution at
the U.N. Security Council that includes the release of the hostages and
full humanitarian access as previous drafts have done.
The United States should begin the process of recognizing the
Palestinian State as a full U.N. member state. This is both a fact--
Palestine is a nation recognized by 139 U.N. member states--and a moral
imperative in the face of what amounts to illegal Israeli annexation.
President Biden should also make clear that he will not release any
additional military funding for Israel without firm commitments that
the cease-fire will be honored unless broken by Hamas and that full
humanitarian access will be ensured; that funds for the Palestinian
Authority will be released; and that illegal Israeli settlements in the
occupied territories will cease.
None of this will be easy, but to my mind, it is absolutely morally
unacceptable that the United States continue its complicity in the
humanitarian disaster that is taking place in Gaza right now. The time
is now to say no to the rightwing extremist government of Netanyahu--no
more money for the Israeli military.
With that, I yield the floor.
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