[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 46 (Thursday, March 14, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2387-S2394]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Israel
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, during his State of the Union
Address last week, President Biden once again rightly pointed out that
Israel has the right and I would say the duty to defend itself in the
aftermath of the brutal Hamas terror attack of October 7 that left
approximately 1,200 brutally murdered and 240 taken hostage. There must
be no more October 7s.
President Biden also described the ongoing humanitarian disaster
taking place in Gaza today. Over 31,000 Palestinians have been killed--
over two-thirds of them women and children--and likely thousands more
unaccounted for, buried beneath the rubble. Gaza has become a hellhole
of human suffering. Humanitarian organizations that have operated
worldwide for decades say they have never witnessed a more terrible
situation.
Among those suffering in Gaza are not only over 2 million innocent
Palestinian civilians but also over 130 hostages still held by Hamas,
including Americans.
Earlier this week, I met with some of the families of Israeli
hostages whose loved ones were kidnapped and are still being held
captive, as well as one brave woman who was held hostage and released
during the November pause.
Every day that they are separated from their loved ones, not knowing
what will happen to them next, is a day of unimaginable mental anguish
and torment. That is why we must prioritize the release of the hostages
and end the suffering of Palestinian civilians. The only way to do that
is to secure an immediate cease-fire and release all of the remaining
hostages. That must happen, but until it happens, we must do everything
in our power to protect innocent civilians and end the humanitarian
disaster in Gaza.
Today, four out of five of the hungriest people on Earth are in Gaza.
Hundreds of thousands of them are on the verge of starvation, and over
23 children have crossed that grisly threshold and have died of
starvation. Cindy McCain, the Director of the World Food Programme, has
warned of an imminent famine. Injured children are having their limbs
amputated without anesthesia. Sewage is spilling onto the streets, and
humanitarian officials are seeing spikes in the spread of various
preventable diseases, like diarrhea, among children.
Two weeks ago, the world got a glimpse of a horrible scene: Over 100
starving Palestinians were killed as they reached for food from trucks.
In the aftermath of that horrible event, President Biden has ordered
airdrops of food supplies. I support that decision because when people
are starving, every parcel of food counts. But airdrops are just a drop
in the ocean of need, so I was also glad to see the President order the
building of a temporary port to help deliver more aid by ship. But that
port will likely not be ready for at least 60 days, and even then, it
will not be sufficient to meet the humanitarian need.
All of these extraordinary efforts to deliver aid by air and by sea
are being undertaken when we know that during the prewar period, when
there was already a near blockade of Gaza, about 500 trucks still
crossed daily through the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza. And those
500 trucks crossed every day when the need was far less acute than it
is right now.
So the obvious question is, Why? Why in the world should we have to
resort to these extraordinary and more expensive means to deliver
insufficient amounts of food and aid by air and sea when we could bring
in sufficient amounts of food and aid by truck much more efficiently
through Egypt's Rafah crossing and the multiple crossing points into
Gaza from Israel?
The answer is because this is a man-made disaster.
The starvation in Gaza is not the result of food scarcity caused by
drought or other natural disasters that we see in many parts of the
world. This has been caused primarily because the Netanyahu government
has used a series of tactics to restrict the amount of aid entering
into Gaza. Anyone with eyes to see or ears to hear knows that.
Members of the Netanyahu government, like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir,
[[Page S2388]]
have made no secret of their intentions. In October, after the war
began, Ben-Gvir said:
So long as Hamas does not release the hostages, the only
thing that should enter Gaza is hundreds of tons of Air Force
explosives--not one ounce of humanitarian aid.
Smotrich used his power as Finance Minister to block a shipment of
flour that could feed 1.1 million people for a month in Gaza. The
shipment was finally released 2 days ago after having been blocked for
5 weeks at least, all while people were starving.
At one point, Prime Minister Netanyahu said his government was
allowing just the ``minimum'' amount needed, and that was at a time
when he and others denied that there was even a humanitarian disaster
in Gaza; denied that there was a scarcity of food in Gaza; denied that
there was hunger in Gaza.
This is why President Biden has called out those restrictions and why
he said in his State of the Union Address:
Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration
or a bargaining chip.
The President said that his administration is going to ``insist that
Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more
people the help they need--no excuses.''
More than 5 weeks ago, on February 2, 25 Senators sent a letter to
President Biden, calling for the Netanyahu government to implement five
specific actions to significantly increase the amount of humanitarian
aid entering Gaza. To date, none of them have been fully implemented.
That is why many of us have called on President Biden to immediately
invoke and implement the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act, which is
section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act. Now that NSM--National
Security Memorandum--20 is in place, which is based on an amendment
that 19 of us proposed to the National Security Act, it is essential--
essential--that the Biden administration enforce its terms to get
humanitarian aid delivered where it needs to go. When people are
starving, patience is not a virtue.
It needs to be said that getting humanitarian aid into Gaza is only
half the battle. The other half and the more dangerous half is
distributing the aid once it is inside of Gaza. It doesn't do any good
if you can't safely transport the food to the people who are starving.
In other words, you need a safe distribution system for aid inside
Gaza. Now, the organization that is the primary distributor of
assistance within Gaza has been an entity called the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency, known by its shorthand as UNRWA. Americans may
have not heard much about UNRWA, so I want to say a little bit about
why UNRWA exists and what it does in Gaza and elsewhere. But before I
do that, I want to jump to why this is a pressing issue right now.
The future of UNRWA is an urgent matter right now because Prime
Minister Netanyahu and his extreme rightwing allies want to get rid of
it not just in Gaza but everywhere that it operates. And guess what.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and folks on the far right in his government
have wanted to abolish UNRWA not just since October 7 but since at
least 2017. In fact, in 2018, Prime Minister Netanyahu actually changed
official Israeli policy with respect to UNRWA, saying that they wanted
to cut off all funding to UNRWA, even at a time that his security team
warned that it could create instabilities throughout the region if that
happened.
Now we have Republican Members of the House and Senate who are
jumping on this bandwagon and saying they want to abolish UNRWA. And
how do they want to do this? By inserting a provision in the State,
Foreign Operations, and Related Programs appropriations bill, which is
being considered and debated right now as we gather here, to cut off
all U.S. funding for UNRWA. That is what they want to do.
So let's go back to why UNRWA was created in the first place.
In 1949--a year after the establishment of the State of Israel--the
United Nations formed a new agency to provide vital services for over
700,000 Palestinian refugees who were displaced during the first Arab-
Israeli war. Back then, the idea was that UNRWA would provide services
to Palestinian refugees until a just and durable solution to their
plight was found. As we know all too well, over 73 years have passed
without a resolution to that conflict, which is why UNRWA's mission
remains essential. Among other services, UNRWA provides schools and
primary health services to Palestinian refugees and their descendants
in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and in Gaza.
I hope we all agree that the Palestinian people deserve to live in
dignity. The way to do that is to ensure that they also have self-
determination in a homeland of their own, just like every Israeli
deserves dignity and self-determination in the Jewish and democratic
State of Israel.
President Biden and I and many others believe that the only viable,
long-term solution to this conflict is a two-state solution, and
President Biden has put that idea forward as the best way to create
some light at the end of this very dark tunnel. UNRWA was really
intended to be a bridge until such a resolution was reached.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has stated very clearly that he is opposed
to a two-state solution. He was opposed to the Oslo Accords, and he has
been a severe opponent of the two-state solution. And as I said
earlier, he also wants to eliminate UNRWA, which today is an
organization of over 300,000 employees providing services to
Palestinians in three countries and, as I said, also in the West Bank
and Gaza.
Mr. President, 13,000 of those 30,000 UNRWA staff operate in Gaza--
many of them as teachers. Since the war started with the brutal Hamas
attacks on Israel of October 7, UNRWA's schools in Gaza have shut down;
and as a United Nations agency, it has deployed its resources to supply
humanitarian relief to the civilian population there. It is the main
vehicle for distributing humanitarian assistance in Gaza. It won't do
any good to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza if you dismantle the
U.N. organization principally responsible for delivering that aid to
people in Gaza.
This morning, I met with chef Jose Andres, and I applaud him for his
efforts and the efforts of the World Central Kitchen around the world,
including in Israel and in Gaza. He said:
Support for UNRWA is vital. If you want to feed people you
need to support UNRWA.
We may have a temporary port, but when the ship gets to the port,
someone has to transfer that food and other assistance from the ship to
the people who need it in Gaza, and UNRWA is the principal distributor
of assistance. If you talk to the World Food Programme and others, they
say very clearly they cannot replace that capacity that UNRWA has.
In late January, the Netanyahu government alleged that up to 14 of
UNRWA's 13,000 employees participated in the horrific October attacks
against Israel. These are, of course, very serious allegations, and
UNRWA has taken them seriously. All agree that any individuals involved
in that horror must be held accountable, and even though the Netanyahu
government has not provided UNRWA with the underlying evidence, UNRWA
immediately fired the alleged perpetrators.
The U.N. Secretary General also took swift action and announced the
launch of a full and independent investigation, led by the U.N.'s
highest investigative body, into the allegations; and that is ongoing.
At the same time, President Biden suspended all U.S. contributions to
UNRWA pending the outcome of that investigation. A number of other
countries followed suit, as did the EU.
But, since then, two things have changed. First, the Netanyahu
government has not shared the underlying evidence with UNRWA nor, as
reported by The Wall Street Journal, has it shared the raw evidence
with the United States. In fact, I urge every one of my Senate
colleagues to read the classified report prepared by the DNI, and I
especially urge my colleagues to read the intelligence assessments
about the many other claims the Netanyahu government has made against
UNRWA--and there have been many. I am sure that many of my colleagues
are unaware of the fact that UNRWA has long provided both Israel and
the United States with the names and identities of all its employees
for full review and vetting. Now, Israel, of course, has far more
extensive intelligence capabilities than UNRWA; but, apparently, they
have never previously raised complaints about any of the
[[Page S2389]]
UNRWA employees on the lists given to them.
Second, the EU and many countries that initially suspended their
financial support for UNRWA have since restored their contributions
because they have acknowledged the desperation in Gaza and the
irreplaceable nature of UNRWA. In fact, even prior to these
allegations, UNRWA had asked the U.N. Secretary General to convene an
Independent Review Group to assess whether UNRWA was doing everything
within its power to ensure neutrality.
So, again, UNRWA in Gaza--an organization with a staff of 13,000
people--is delivering essential life-sustaining aid to over 2 million
people. And what the EU and these other countries that have restored
UNRWA funding recognize is that it is inhumane to cut off assistance to
2 million people because of the atrocious, alleged acts of 14. Punish
the 14. Don't punish 2 million innocent Gazans, and that is why I
believe that President Biden should restore this assistance now.
The notion that UNRWA is, somehow, a front group for Hamas is a total
lie--pure and simple. The individual dispatched by President Biden to
be the U.S. humanitarian coordinator in the region is a veteran
diplomat, Ambassador David Satterfield. He has repeatedly debunked
claims made by members of the Netanyahu government that humanitarian
aid provided by UNRWA has been diverted to Hamas. Specifically, he said
the following:
I have not received any allegations, evidence or reports of
any incidence of Hamas diversion or theft of U.S. or other
assistance or fuel from UN delivered assistance from any of
our partners or from the Government of Israel since the
humanitarian assistance resumed in Gaza October 21.
Not a single report from Israeli Government officials or anybody else
about Hamas diverting aid that was being transported by UNRWA or other
U.N. agencies.
My colleagues, you should all know that the individual overseeing
operations on the ground in Gaza today is an American named Scott
Anderson. He is a 21-year Army veteran from South Dakota. He is a no-
nonsense guy. I urge every Senator to talk to him. The notion that
Scott Anderson is part of a front organization for Hamas is patently
absurd.
The truth is that before the war started, Prime Minister Netanyahu
did not pretend that he wanted to dismantle UNRWA on the grounds that
it was a proxy for Hamas. He has long wanted to eliminate UNRWA not
only in Gaza but everywhere else that it supports education for
Palestinian schoolchildren and healthcare for Palestinians, like in the
West Bank and Jordan. As I said, he has been trying to do that since at
least the year 2017. And now he has Republicans in Congress joining him
and calling for the defunding of all U.S. support for UNRWA, not only
in Gaza but throughout the region.
Attempts to discredit UNRWA and the U.N. have gotten so bad that 18
heads of all the major U.N. humanitarian and refugee agencies, together
with NGOs like Save the Children and CARE, signed a statement calling
for a ``halt to campaigns that seek to discredit the United Nations and
non-governmental organizations doing their best to save lives.'' It is
making it harder for them to save lives.
If you want to take a combustible situation in the West Bank and make
it even worse, then close down schools for kids there. Take away any
chance of an education. Snuff out any hopes they may have for a
brighter future. Really?
If you want to create instability in Jordan, shut down UNRWA schools
and services there. Why do we all think that King Abdallah has warned
us about the consequences of shutting down UNRWA?
Here is the crazy thing about this moment: Prime Minister Netanyahu
has seized on the lies about UNRWA being a proxy for Hamas in Gaza to
achieve his long-term goal of shutting down UNRWA everywhere.
And what adds insult to injury is that UNRWA has not perpetuated
Hamas in Gaza, but Prime Minister Netanyahu himself has done exactly
that. Let me explain.
You know, there is a lot of talk here in the U.S. Senate about the
malign actors who have supported Hamas over the years. One of them is a
very malign actor, Iran.
Now, Iran did not create Hamas, nor does Iran exercise command and
control over Hamas. But it does support Hamas because, like Iran, Hamas
has the despicable goal of eliminating Israel. That is why Iran has
supported Hamas.
But what we rarely, if ever, discuss is the inconvenient truth that,
until the unexpected horror of the Hamas attack on October 7, Prime
Minister Netanyahu himself saw it as in his interest to keep Hamas in
control in Gaza.
Don't take my word for it. He told us in his own words back in 2019
at a Likud Party meeting where he said:
Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian
state needs to support strengthening Hamas. This is part of
our strategy to divide the Palestinians between those in Gaza
and those in Judea and Samaria.
Prime Minister Netanyahu:
Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian
state needs to support strengthening Hamas.
Mr. President, I would like to have printed in the Record a piece
that appeared in Haaretz, in October of last year, entitled ``A Brief
History of the Netanyahu-Hamas Alliance.'' I ask unanimous consent that
it be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Haaretz, Oct. 20, 2023]
A Brief History of the Netanyahu-Hamas Alliance
(By Adam Raz)
For 14 years, Netanyahu's policy was to keep Hamas in
power; the pogrom of October 7, 2023, helps the Israeli prime
minister preserve his own rule.
Much ink has been spilled describing the longtime
relationship--rather, alliance--between Benjamin Netanyahu
and Hamas. And still, the very fact that there has been close
cooperation between the Israeli prime minister (with the
support of many on the right) and the fundamentalist
organization seemingly evaporated from most of the current
analyses--everyone's talking about ``failures,'' ``mistakes''
and ``contzeptziot'' (fixed conceptions). Given this, there
is a need not only to review the history of cooperation but
also to conclude unequivocally: The pogrom of October 7,
2023, helps Netanyahu, and not for the first time, to
preserve his rule, certainly in the short term.
The MO of Netanyahu's policy since his return to the Prime
Minister's Office in 2009 has and continues to be, on the one
hand, bolstering the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and, on
the other, weakening the Palestinian Authority.
His return to power was accompanied by a complete
turnaround from the policy of his predecessor, Ehud Olmert,
who sought to end the conflict through a peace treaty with
the most moderate Palestinian leader--PA President Mahmoud
Abbas.
For the last 14 years, while implementing a divide-and-
conquer policy vis-a-vis the West Bank and Gaza, ``Abu Yair''
(``Yair's father,'' in Arabic, as Netanyahu called himself
while campaigning in the Arab community before one recent
election) has resisted any attempt, military or diplomatic,
that might bring an end to the Hamas regime.
In practice, since the Cast Lead operation in late 2008 and
early 2009, during the Olmert era, Hamas' rule has not faced
any genuine military threat. On the contrary: The group has
been supported by the Israeli prime minister, and funded with
his assistance.
When Netanyahu declared in April 2019, as he has after
every other round of fighting, that ``we have restored
deterrence with Hamas'' and that ``we have blocked the main
supply routes,'' he was lying through his teeth.
For over a decade, Netanyahu has lent a hand, in various
ways, to the growing military and political power of Hamas.
Netanyahu is the one who turned Hamas from a terror
organization with few resources into a semi-state body.
Releasing Palestinian prisoners, allowing cash transfers,
as the Qatari envoy comes and goes to Gaza as he pleases,
agreeing to the import of a broad array of goods,
construction materials in particular, with the knowledge that
much of the material will be designated for terrorism and not
for building civilian infrastructure, increasing the number
of work permits in Israel for Palestinian workers from Gaza,
and more. All these developments created symbiosis between
the flowering of fundamentalist terrorism and preservation of
Netanyahu's rule.
Take note: It would be a mistake to assume that Netanyahu
thought about the well-being of the poor and oppressed
Gazans--who are also victims of Hamas--when allowing the
transfer of funds (some of which, as noted, didn't go to
building infrastructure but rather military armament). His
goal was to hurt Abbas and prevent division of the Land of
Israel into two states.
It's important to remember that without those funds from
Qatar (and Iran), Hamas would not have had the money to
maintain
[[Page S2390]]
its reign of terror, and its regime would have been dependent
on restraint.
In practice, the injection of cash (as opposed to bank
deposits, which are far more accountable) from Qatar, a
practice that Netanyahu supported and approved, has served to
strengthen the military arm of Hamas since 2012.
Thus, Netanyahu indirectly funded Hamas after Abbas decided
to stop providing it with funds that he knew would end up
being used for terrorism against him, his policies and his
people. It's important not to ignore that Hamas used this
money to buy the means through which Israelis have been
murdered for years.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. After all, so long as Hamas was in control in Gaza,
how could anyone ask Israel to accept a Palestinian State that included
Gaza and the West Bank? It is a fair question.
So what are some of the ways in which Prime Minister Netanyahu has
enabled Hamas to maintain its control in Gaza? Well, another thing we
have heard a lot about around here is the money from Qatar that went to
Hamas. It is well established that every penny of that money flowed
from Qatar to Hamas with the concurrence of Prime Minister Netanyahu
and Israel. That has been the testimony of witnesses in both the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee and the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Committee. It has also been well documented in numerous news sources.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
a CNN article entitled ``Qatar sends millions to Gaza for years--with
Israel's backing.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From CNN, Dec. 12, 2023]
Qatar sent millions to Gaza for Years--with Israel's Backing. Here's
What We Know About the Controversial Deal
(By Nima Elbagir, Barbara Arvanitidies, Alex Platt, Raja Razek, Nadeen
Ebrahim, and Uri Blau)
Since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the Gulf state
of Qatar has come under fire by Israeli officials, American
politicians and media outlets for sending hundreds of
millions of dollars in aid to Gaza, which is governed by the
Palestinian militant group. But all that happened with
Israel's blessing.
In a series of interviews with key Israeli players
conducted in collaboration with Israeli investigative
journalism organization Shomrim, CNN was told Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu continued the cash flow to Hamas, despite
concerns raised from within his own government.
Qatar has vowed not to stop those payments. Qatari minister
of state for foreign affairs Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al-
Khulaifi told CNN's Becky Anderson on Monday that his
government will continue to make payments to Gaza to support
the enclave, as it has been doing for years.
``We're not going to change our mandate. Our mandate is our
continuous help and support for our brothers and sisters of
Palestine. We will continue to do it systematically as we did
it before,'' Al-Khulaifi said.
Israeli sources responded by pointing out that successive
governments had facilitated the transfer of money to Gaza for
humanitarian reasons and that Netanyahu had acted decisively
against Hamas after the October 7 attacks.
Here's what we know about those payments and Israel's role
in facilitating them.
when did the qatari payments start?
In 2018, Qatar began making monthly payments to the Gaza
Strip. Some $15 million were sent into Gaza in cash-filled
suitcases--delivered by the Qataris through Israeli territory
after months of negotiation with Israel.
The payments started after the Palestinian Authority (PA),
the Palestinian government in the Israeli occupied West Bank
that is a rival of Hamas, decided to cut salaries of
government employees in Gaza in 2017, an Israeli government
source with knowledge of the matter told CNN at the time.
what did israel know about hamas' october 7 attack?
The PA opposed the Qatari funding at the time, which Hamas
said was meant for the payment of public salaries as well as
medical purposes.
Israel approved the deal in a security cabinet meeting in
August 2018, when Netanyahu was serving his previous tenure
as premier.
Even then, Netanyahu was criticized by his coalition
partners for the deal and for being too soft on Hamas.
The prime minister defended the initiative at the time,
saying the deal was made ``in coordination with security
experts to return calm to (Israeli) villages of the south,
but also to prevent a humanitarian disaster (in Gaza).''
Ahmad Majdalani, an Executive Committee member at the
Palestine Liberation Organization in the West Bank, accused
the United States of orchestrating the payment.
The US was aware of the Qatari payments to Hamas, a former
senior State Department official involved in the region told
CNN on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the
matter.
Qatar was prepared to provide funds to the Gaza Strip
through Hamas as early as the 2014 Israel-Hamas war to
alleviate the humanitarian crisis there, the official said,
and the US at the time left it up to the Israelis to decide
whether they would permit this.
``We deferred completely to the Israelis as to whether this
was something they wanted to do or not,'' the official said.
Why did Israel back the payments?
Israeli and international media have reported that
Netanyahu's plan to continue allowing aid to reach Gaza
through Qatar was in the hope that it might make Hamas an
effective counterweight to the PA and prevent the
establishment of a Palestinian state.
PA officials said at the time the cash transfers encouraged
division between Palestinian factions.
Major General Amos Gilad, a former senior Israeli Defense
Ministry official, told CNN the plan was backed by the prime
minister, but not by the Israeli intelligence community.
There was also some belief that it would ``weaken Palestinian
sovereignty,'' he said. There was also an illusion, he added,
that ``if you fed them (Hamas) with money, they would be
tamed.''
Shlomo Brom, a former deputy to Israel's national security
adviser, told the New York Times that an empowered Hamas
helped Netanyahu avoid negotiating over a Palestinian state,
saying the division of the Palestinians helped him make the
case that he had no partner for peace in the Palestinians,
thus avoiding pressure for peace talks that could lead to the
establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
The former State Department official said that after the
2014 war, Israel felt it was better off with Hamas
controlling Gaza as opposed to multiple Islamist groups, or
leaving it in a political vacuum.
``It was our impression that the Israelis were comfortable
with keeping Hamas in power in a weakened form,'' the
official said. ``Our understanding was that Hamas was the
lesser of a whole bunch of bad options in Gaza,'' the
official added, noting that at least the competing PA could
keep Hamas out of the West Bank.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have
printed in the Record a New York Times article from December of last
year entitled ``'Buying Quiet': Inside the Israeli plan that propped up
Hamas.''
The sub headline is ``Prime Minister Netanyahu gambled that a strong
Hamas (but not too strong) would keep the peace and reduce pressure for
a Palestinian state.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From New York Times, Dec. 10, 2023]
`Buying Quiet': Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas
(By Mark Mazzetti and Ronen Bergman)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gambled that a strong
Hamas (but not too strong) would keep the peace and reduce
pressure for a Palestinian state.
Just weeks before Hamas launched the deadly Oct. 7 attacks
on Israel, the head of Mossad arrived in Doha, Qatar, for a
meeting with Qatari officials.
For years, the Qatari government had been sending millions
of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip--money that helped
prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had
encouraged them.
During his meetings in September with the Qatari officials,
according to several people familiar with the secret
discussions, the Mossad chief, David Barnea, was asked a
question that had not been on the agenda: Did Israel want the
payments to continue?
Mr. Netanyahu's government had recently decided to continue
the policy, so Mr. Barnea said yes. The Israeli government
still welcomed the money from Doha.
Allowing the payments--billions of dollars over roughly a
decade--was a gamble by Mr. Netanyahu that a steady flow of
money would maintain peace in Gaza, the eventual launching
point of the Oct. 7 attacks, and keep Hamas focused on
governing, not fighting.
The Qatari payments, while ostensibly a secret, have been
widely known and discussed in the Israeli news media for
years. Mr. Netanyahu's critics disparage them as part of a
strategy of ``buying quiet,'' and the policy is in the middle
of a ruthless reassessment following the attacks. Mr.
Netanyahu has lashed back at that criticism, calling the
suggestion that he tried to empower Hamas ``ridiculous.''
In interviews with more than two dozen current and former
Israeli, American and Qatari officials, and officials from
other Middle Eastern governments, The New York Times
unearthed new details about the origins of the policy, the
controversies that erupted inside the Israeli government and
the lengths that Mr. Netanyahu went to in order to shield the
Qataris from criticism and keep the money flowing.
The payments were part of a string of decisions by Israeli
political leaders, military officers and intelligence
officials--all based on the fundamentally flawed assessment
that
[[Page S2391]]
Hamas was neither interested in nor capable of a large-scale
attack. The Times has previously reported on intelligence
failures and other faulty assumptions that preceded the
attacks.
Even as the Israeli military obtained battle plans for a
Hamas invasion and analysts observed significant terrorism
exercises just over the border in Gaza, the payments
continued. For years, Israeli intelligence officers even
escorted a Qatari official into Gaza, where he doled out
money from suitcases filled with millions of dollars.
The money from Qatar had humanitarian goals like paying
government salaries in Gaza and buying fuel to keep a power
plant running. But Israeli intelligence officials now believe
that the money had a role in the success of the Oct. 7
attacks, if only because the donations allowed Hamas to
divert some of its own budget toward military operations.
Separately, Israeli intelligence has long assessed that Qatar
uses other channels to secretly fund Hamas' military wing, an
accusation that Qatar's government has denied.
``Any attempt to cast a shadow of uncertainty about the
civilian and humanitarian nature of Qatar's contributions and
their positive impact is baseless,'' a Qatari official said
in a statement.
Multiple Israeli governments enabled money to go to Gaza
for humanitarian reasons, not to strengthen Hamas, an
official in Mr. Netanyahu's office said in a statement. He
added: ``Prime Minister Netanyahu acted to weaken Hamas
significantly. He led three powerful military operations
against Hamas which killed thousands of terrorists and senior
Hamas commanders.''
Hamas has always publicly stated its commitment to
eliminating the state of Israel. But each payout was a
testament to the Israeli government's view that Hamas was a
low-level nuisance, and even a political asset.
As far back as December 2012, Mr. Netanyahu told the
prominent Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that it was
important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the
Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Mr. Margalit, in an
interview, said that Mr. Netanyahu told him that having two
strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him
to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.
The official in the prime minister's office said Mr.
Netanyahu never made this statement. But the prime minister
would articulate this idea to others over the years.
While Israeli military and intelligence leaders have
acknowledged failings leading up to the Hamas attack, Mr.
Netanyahu has refused to address such questions. And with a
war waging in Gaza, a political reckoning for the man who has
served as prime minister for 13 of the last 15 years, is, for
the moment, on hold.
But Mr. Netanyahu's critics say that his approach to Hamas
had, at its core, a cynical political agenda: to keep Gaza
quiet as a means of staying in office without addressing the
threat of Hamas or simmering Palestinian discontent.
``The conception of Netanyahu over a decade and a half was
that if we buy quiet and pretend the problem isn't there, we
can wait it out and it will fade away,'' said Eyal Hulata,
Israel's national security adviser from July 2021 until the
beginning of this year.
Seeking Equilibrium
Mr. Netanyahu and his security aides slowly began
reconsidering their strategy toward the Gaza Strip after
several bloody and inconclusive military conflicts there
against Hamas.
``Everyone was sick and tired of Gaza,'' said Zohar Palti,
a former director of intelligence for Mossad. ``We all said,
`Let's forget about Gaza,' because we knew it was a
deadlock.''
After one of the conflicts, in 2014, Mr. Netanyahu charted
a new course--emphasizing a strategy of trying to ``contain''
Hamas while Israel focused on Iran's nuclear program and its
proxy armies like Hezbollah.
This strategy was buttressed by repeated intelligence
assessments that Hamas was neither interested in nor capable
of launching a significant attack inside Israel.
Qatar, during this period, became a key financier for
reconstruction and government operations in Gaza. One of the
world's wealthiest nations, Qatar has long championed the
Palestinian cause and, of all its neighbors, has cultivated
the closest ties to Hamas. These relationships have proved
valuable in recent weeks as Qatari officials have helped
negotiate for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Qatar's work in Gaza during this period was blessed by the
Israeli government. And Mr. Netanyahu even lobbied Washington
on Qatar's behalf. In 2017, as Republicans pushed to impose
financial sanctions on Qatar over its support for Hamas, he
dispatched senior defense officials to Washington. The
Israelis told American lawmakers that Qatar had played a
positive role in the Gaza Strip, according to three people
familiar with the trip.
Yossi Kuperwasser, a former head of research for Israel's
military intelligence, said that some officials saw the
benefits of maintaining an ``equilibrium'' in the Gaza Strip.
``The logic of Israel was that Hamas should be strong enough
to rule Gaza,'' he said, ``but weak enough to be deterred by
Israel.''
The administrations of three American presidents--Barack
Obama, Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr.--broadly
supported having the Qataris playing a direct role in funding
Gaza operations.
But not everyone was on board.
Avigdor Lieberman, months after becoming defense minister
in 2016, wrote a secret memo to Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli
military chief of staff. He said Hamas was slowly building
its military abilities to attack Israel, and he argued that
Israel should strike first.
Israel's goal is ``to ensure that the next confrontation
between Israel and Hamas will be the final showdown,'' he
wrote in the memo, dated Dec. 21, 2016, a copy of which was
reviewed by The Times. A pre-emptive strike, he said, could
remove most of the ``leadership of the military wing of
Hamas.''
Mr. Netanyahu rejected the plan, preferring containment to
confrontation.
Hamas as `an Asset'
Among the team of Mossad agents that tracked terrorism
financing, some came to believe that--even beyond the money
from Qatar--Mr. Netanyahu was not very concerned about
stopping money going to Hamas.
Uzi Shaya, for example, made several trips to China to try
to shut down what Israeli intelligence had assessed was a
money-laundering operation for Hamas run through the Bank of
China.
After his retirement, he was called to testify against the
Bank of China in an American lawsuit brought by the family of
a victim of a Hamas terrorist attack.
At first, the head of Mossad encouraged him to testify,
saying it could increase financial pressure on Hamas, Mr.
Shaya recalled in a recent interview.
Then, the Chinese offered Mr. Netanyahu a state visit.
Suddenly, Mr. Shaya recalled, he got different orders from
his former bosses: He was not to testify.
Mr. Netanyahu visited Beijing in May 2013, part of an
effort to strengthen economic and diplomatic ties between
Israel and China. Mr. Shaya said he would have liked to have
testified.
``Unfortunately,'' he said, ``there were other
considerations.''
While the reasons for the decision were never confirmed,
the change in tack left him suspicious. Especially because
politicians at times talked openly about the value of a
strong Hamas.
Shlomo Brom, a retired general and former deputy to
Israel's national security adviser, said an empowered Hamas
helped Mr. Netanyahu avoid negotiating over a Palestinian
state.
``One effective way to prevent a two-state solution is to
divide between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,'' he said in
an interview. The division gives Mr. Netanyahu an excuse to
disengage from peace talks, Mr. Brom said, adding that he can
say, ``I have no partner.''
Mr. Netanyahu did not articulate this strategy publicly,
but some on the Israeli political right had no such
hesitation.
Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who is now Mr.
Netanyahu's finance minister, put it bluntly in 2015, the
year he was elected to Parliament.
``The Palestinian Authority is a burden,'' he said. ``Hamas
is an asset.''
Suitcases Full of Cash
During a 2018 cabinet meeting, Mr. Netanyahu's aides
presented a new plan: Every month, the Qatari government
would make millions of dollars in cash payments directly to
people in Gaza as part of a cease-fire agreement with Hamas.
Shin Bet, the country's domestic security service, would
monitor the list of recipients to try to ensure that members
of Hamas's military wing would not directly benefit.
Despite those assurances, dissent boiled over. Mr.
Lieberman saw the plan as a capitulation and resigned in
November 2018. He publicly accused Mr. Netanyahu of ``buying
short-term peace at the price of serious damage to long-term
national security.'' In the years that followed, Mr.
Lieberman would become one of Mr. Netanyahu's fiercest
critics.
During an interview last month in his office, Mr. Lieberman
said the decisions in 2018 directly led to the Oct. 7
attacks.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. But Prime Minister Netanyahu's role in keeping Hamas
in control in Gaza did not end there.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
a New York Times piece, again, from December of last year headlined:
``Israel found the Hamas money machine years ago. Nobody turned it
off.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the New York Times, Dec. 16, 2023]
Israel Found the Hamas Money Machine Years Ago. Nobody Turned It Off
(By Jo Becker and Justin Scheck)
Israeli security officials scored a major intelligence coup
in 2018: secret documents that laid out, in intricate detail,
what amounted to a private equity fund that Hamas used to
finance its operations.
The ledgers, pilfered from the computer of a senior Hamas
official, listed assets worth hundreds of millions of
dollars. Hamas controlled mining, chicken farming and road
building companies in Sudan, twin skyscrapers in the United
Arab Emirates, a
[[Page S2392]]
property developer in Algeria, and a real estate firm listed
on the Turkish stock exchange.
The documents, which The New York Times reviewed, were a
potential road map for choking off Hamas's money and
thwarting its plans. The agents who obtained the records
shared them inside their own government and in Washington.
Nothing happened.
For years, none of the companies named in the ledgers faced
sanctions from the United States or Israel. Nobody publicly
called out the companies or pressured Turkey, the hub of the
financial network, to shut it down.
A Times investigation found that both senior Israeli and
American officials failed to prioritize financial
intelligence--which they had in hand--showing that tens of
millions of dollars flowed from the companies to Hamas at the
exact moment that it was buying new weapons and preparing an
attack.
That money, American and Israeli officials now say, helped
Hamas build up its military infrastructure and helped lay the
groundwork for the Oct. 7 attacks.
``Everyone is talking about failures of intelligence on
Oct. 7, but no one is talking about the failure to stop the
money,'' said Udi Levy, a former chief of Mossad's economic
warfare division. ``It's the money--the money--that allowed
this.''
At its peak, Israeli and American officials now say, the
portfolio had a value of roughly half a billion dollars.
Even after the Treasury Department finally levied sanctions
against the network in 2022, records show, Hamas-linked
figures were able to obtain millions of dollars by selling
shares in a blacklisted company. The Treasury Department now
fears that such money flows will allow Hamas to finance its
continuing war with Israel and to rebuild when it is over.
``It's something we are deeply worried about and expect to
see given the financial stress Hamas is under,'' said Brian
Nelson, the Treasury Department's under secretary for
terrorism and financial intelligence. ``What we are trying to
do is disrupt that.''
That was what Israel's terrorism-finance investigators
hoped to do with their 2018 discovery. But at the top
echelons of the Israeli and American governments, officials
focused on putting together a series of financial sanctions
against Iran. Neither country prioritized Hamas.
Israeli leaders believed that Hamas was more interested in
governing than fighting. By the time the agents discovered
the ledgers in 2018, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
was encouraging the government of Qatar to deliver millions
of dollars to the Gaza Strip. He gambled that the money would
buy stability and peace.
Mr. Levy recalled briefing Mr. Netanyahu personally in 2015
about the Hamas portfolio.
``I can tell you for sure that I talked to him about
this,'' Mr. Levy said. ``But he didn't care that much about
it.''
Mr. Netanyahu's Mossad chief shut down Mr. Levy's team,
Task Force Harpoon, that focused on disrupting the money
flowing to groups including Hamas.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I want to quote from Mr. Levy, who is quoted in that
article. He was the Mossad chief in charge of economic policy. He says:
``I can tell you for sure that I talked to him''--referring to Prime
Minister Netanyahu--``about this. But he didn't care that much about
it.''
The article goes on to point out that Mr. Netanyahu's Mossad chief
shut down Mr. Levy's team, the task force called Harpoon that focused
on disrupting the money flowing to groups including Hamas.
So let's go back to why Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extreme
rightwing allies, like Smotrich and Ben Gvir, wanted to keep Hamas in
place in Gaza. It is because, as they have said, their primary goal was
to avoid the establishment of a Palestinian State. And so long as they
could keep the Palestinians divided, they could avoid a united national
movement for such a state. And so long as Hamas was in control of Gaza,
it proved a useful foil against recognizing a Palestinian State that
included the West Bank and Gaza, until the horror of October 7.
The corollary of not threatening Hamas's control of Gaza has been to
systematically weaken the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The
terrible irony, of course, is that while helping perpetuate Hamas--
which was dedicated to the destruction of Israel and is dedicated to
the destruction of Israel--Prime Minister Netanyahu and his allies have
undermined the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, which, for over 30
years, since the Oslo Accords, have recognized Israel's right to exist
and have sought to coexist with Israel.
Their strategy: Keep Hamas in place; undermine the Palestinian
Authority.
In fact, even today, during the war in Gaza, Finance Minister
Smotrich is withholding an even greater share of the PA's own funds,
and, since coming to power, the Netanyahu government has advanced even
more settlements and allowed even more outposts deeper in the West
Bank. And, of course, that further undermines the legitimacy of the PA
in the eyes of the Palestinian people by exposing their total inability
to stop those actions, even as they, the PA, help provide to Israel
with security in certain areas of the West Bank.
So Prime Minister Netanyahu has advanced the strategy of weakening
the Palestinian Authority and facilitating Hamas in order to prevent
Palestinians from being able to live in dignity in a state of their
own. And the reason--the reason--that Prime Minister Netanyahu and the
far-right extremists in his government, like Smotrich and Ben Gvir,
don't want a Palestinian State in the West Bank is that they want it
all for themselves in what they envision as a ``Greater Israel.''
If you have Palestinians in the West Bank or who stay in the West
Bank, you can't implement the vision of a ``Greater Israel''--their
version of one state.
So we come full circle. UNRWA was established to be a bridge to
provide services, like education, to Palestinian refugees after they
were displaced. I am sure its founders did not expect it to be around
for so long, but that is because they likely never envisioned that, 74
years later, the conflict that gave rise to UNRWA would remain
unresolved.
But it is unresolved, and now Prime Minister Netanyahu has openly
opposed President Biden's call to resolve it, ultimately, by enacting a
real two-state solution that would include normalization of relations
between Israel and Saudi Arabia and the other Arab countries that have
yet to recognize Israel--important security needed for the Jewish State
of Israel.
And at the same time that Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to torpedo a
two-state solution to resolve the conflict, he also wants to pursue his
long-term goal of ending the organization that was not born out of that
conflict, UNRWA, and eliminating the services that it currently
provides to Palestinian refugees.
The United States should not be complicit in this scheme. We should
not be a party to defunding UNRWA in Gaza, which is, right now, playing
a critical role in the delivery of desperately needed food and
humanitarian assistance to starving people. Nor should we be complicit
in defunding the essential services UNRWA provides in places like the
West Bank, Jordan, and other places.
I support reforming UNRWA but not eliminating it. The question of
defunding UNRWA is, at this very moment, the biggest unresolved issue
in the Foreign Operations appropriations bill. I call upon responsible
Members of Congress in the Senate and the House to ensure that the
United States does not defund UNRWA.
Members of Congress who argue for the elimination of UNRWA have never
bothered to drive a short distance from Jerusalem to visit an UNRWA
school and hear young students talk about their dreams to be doctors,
engineers, and educators, like some of us have done. There is hope in
these schools, not hate, and, frankly, that is what we should be able
to do here in the U.S. Senate.
We should be on the side of hope. We should not be a party to more
people starving in Gaza. We should not be a party to the closing of
schools for Palestinian students in the West Bank, Jordan, and other
countries. And the United States should not be a party to creating even
more instability in the Middle East.
Like many of my colleagues, and like President Biden, I believe the
only way to create some light at the end of this dark tunnel is to find
a path that ensures security for the Israeli people and dignity and
self-determination for the Palestinian people.
That is why I stand with our colleague Senator Schumer and his
important and timely comments this morning that rejecting the idea of
Palestinian statehood and sovereignty is a ``grave mistake'' for
regional security and especially for the security of Israelis and
Palestinians.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that a two-state solution would be
a big reward--reward, he says--for Hamas, but the opposite is true.
Hamas has one plan: the destruction of the State of Israel and
replacing the Jewish democratic state with one of their
[[Page S2393]]
own. They want one state. A two-state solution is contrary to
everything Hamas stands for and all it seeks to achieve, so, far from
being a reward, it would be a denial of their goal of one state under
Hamas control.
We all know that the road ahead will be long, and it will be hard. In
the aftermath of the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7 and the
current humanitarian disaster in Gaza, it is hard to imagine a time of
peace and stability. That will only come when Palestinian leaders who
fully embrace the right of Israel to exist in security and Israeli
leaders who recognize that Palestinians must have a viable state of
their own both make the necessary risks for peace.
So let us push for an immediate cease-fire and a release of all the
hostages, and then let us create a flicker of hope in this moment of
darkness.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Booker). The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, at a later date, I will respond to my
colleague from Maryland about UNRWA.
But just to let people know who are following this today, I am the
ranking Republican on the State, Foreign Ops Appropriations
Subcommittee, and I work very well with Senator Coons. Senator Van
Hollen is on the committee. There will not be one dime for UNRWA in any
bill I support, period. And that is not just me; that is Senator
Collins. She is the ranking member who worked very well with Senator
Patty Murray to get the supplemental moving. Why is that? Because we
believe UNRWA is compromised.
I will come and show you the textbooks that UNRWA uses in the
Palestinian community to teach the destruction of the Jewish people. I
will show you texts from people in charge of UNRWA on the ground
celebrating October 7.
The case has been made over here that UNRWA is no longer a credible
organization worth American taxpayer dollars to fund--not one penny for
UNRWA.
Helping the Palestinian people begins with changing the way they are
taught in school. After we defeated the Germans and the Japanese, it
took us a long time to deradicalize a population that was taught from
birth to be radical. So what I hope will happen over the course of time
is that new people in charge of the Palestinian community in the West
Bank and Gaza will stop teaching the death of the Jews, trying to give
the Palestinian children a more hopeful life. I hope that happens one
day soon.
The reason I came to the floor is I have been asked--probably like
the Presiding Officer has--
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Will the Senator from South Carolina yield for a
question?
Mr. GRAHAM. Let me finish. We will come and debate. I have a plane to
catch.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. We really should debate because I don't know any
evidence at all for your--
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina has the floor.
Mr. GRAHAM. We will come down, and we will have a discussion about
everything I said. Let me finish my thought.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina has the floor.
Mr. GRAHAM. Yes. We will have a very vigorous discussion about how
wrong you are to empower this group that has been perpetrating all of
the wrong things, not the right things.
Now, having said all that--
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Will the gentleman yield on that?
Mr. GRAHAM. Let me finish my thought.
Senator Schumer, whom I have worked with on immigration, on a bunch
of things--I have tried to be bipartisan when it comes to foreign
policy. My colleague, the President of the Senate, has been one of my
best friends in trying to find a way forward to get Saudi and Israel to
recognize each other. That would be a big blow to Iran.
I have been asked, like everybody in the body: What do you think
about Senator Schumer's speech?
I am dumbfounded. I have always respected him. I disagree with him
politically. What he said today was earth-shatteringly bad. The
majority leader of the U.S. Senate is calling on the people of Israel
to overthrow their government.
Whether you like Bibi or not is not the question. The question is, Is
it appropriate for anybody in this body telling another country to take
their government down? We are going to have an election here. I hope we
take the Biden government down through the election process, but that
is for us to decide.
This has been very hurtful. I have been on the phone almost all day
trying to explain to people what happened, and I don't have a good
explanation.
We are trying to get Saudi Arabia to recognize the one and only
Jewish State. That is no easy thing for the Crown Prince to do given
this environment.
We are trying to get Israel to take a leap of faith here that it
doesn't have to be this way all the time, to do some things that would
allow the Palestinian community to reorganize.
Seventy-five percent of the Israeli people do not support a two-state
solution now. They have been terribly wounded. There is no support by
any politician in Israel--Gantz, Lapid, anybody--to unilaterally
declare a Palestinian State.
Five Presidents of the United States have said that if there is ever
a Palestinian State, it will come through direct negotiations, without
conditions, between the parties.
In the Trump administration, Jared Kushner had a plan to establish a
Palestinian State that Prime Minister Netanyahu actually agreed with.
The point here is, what should America be doing now? America should
be helping Israel without qualification. We should be trying to find a
way to ease the suffering of the Palestinian people, and the best way
to do that is to destroy Hamas. The reason so many Palestinians have
been killed is because Hamas uses them as human shields.
We live in a world that is literally upside down. We are having
prominent Democratic Members--people I respect--calling on the Israeli
people to take their government down. I can't believe it. I thought it
was a joke. I thought somebody was pranking me this morning. This is a
departure in a very serious way about how the United States interacts
with its allies. I think it has done enormous damage to very delicate
negotiations. I hope that Senator Schumer will revisit this.
I don't know who he is trying to please by saying that, but they are
not worth pleasing. I don't know who you are trying to please by saying
that the Israeli Government needs to cease to exist as it is today and
the Israeli people need to find somebody better, in the eyes of Senator
Schumer.
I am not asking the Israeli people to elect somebody I like; I am
asking them: Whenever you have an election, elect somebody you like. I
am not asking the people of Israel to bow to my view of how to settle
this matter after the largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust.
I want to give unconditional, unqualified support to the people of
Israel to destroy Hamas.
After World War II, if anybody had suggested to America that we need
to take our foot off the gas when it came to destroying the Nazis and
the Japanese, you would have been run out of town. What won the Oscar?
A film called ``Oppenheimer'' talking about how the atomic bomb was
created and used by our country to destroy two cities in Japan to end
the war.
You have to understand--and the Presiding Officer does; you have done
your homework--you have to understand that October 7, to the Israeli
people, is Pearl Harbor and 9/11 on steroids. It is not just a tit-for-
tat with Hamas; it was an attempt by Hamas to break the back of the
Jewish people, to brutally rape and murder in a fashion they want the
world to see.
So the Israeli perspective on what to do is similar to what we
thought we should do after World War II: total, complete victory;
everybody mobilize and do what you have to do to end the war, to take
the Nazis down; and the Imperial Japanese Army--destroy it
unequivocally.
Millions of people were killed in World War II. War is literally
hell. But when you have been attacked the way we were on Pearl Harbor
and 9/11, you have to respond forcefully. You have to make sure it
never happens again. And the only way Israel can do this is to destroy
the military capability of Hamas.
[[Page S2394]]
So why did this happen? I believe that the great Satan, which is
Iran, wanted this to happen to prevent a reconciliation between Saudi
Arabia and the State of Israel, ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. A
nightmare for the Ayatollah is that the Arabs and the Jews make peace
and economically integrate, leaving them behind.
Israel has signed agreements with six of their Arab neighbors under
Bibi's leadership.
When I go, I meet with Lapid, I meet with Gantz, and I meet with
Bibi. I meet with everybody because it is not about Bibi; it is not
about Gantz; it is about our relationship. If it is Gantz or Lapid next
time, I will meet with them. I know them all. Mr. Lapid and I are very
good friends. I have known Bibi for 25 years. It is about, what should
we do to help our friends in Israel?
Nothing would please me more than to find a way to end this war
sooner rather than later and get back on track for their normalization
process, but we cannot expect Israel to stop now. It is like putting 80
percent of a fire out--the 20 percent is going to start it all over
again.
We are down to six brigades, organized military units that Hamas has
to wreak havoc on the Palestinian people and the State of Israel. It is
nonnegotiable: Hamas will be destroyed militarily.
I am hoping, in the middle of all this chaos, we can still find a way
for Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalize. That would be the ultimate
death blow, I think, to the Iranian ambitions in the region. Part of
that deal, as the Presiding Officer knows, would be the Palestinians
would have a better life eventually; that Saudi Arabia and UAE would
invest heavily into Gaza and the West Bank; new, younger, less corrupt
people running the place, trying to find a pathway forward where the
Palestinians and Israel can coexist in a way that is beneficial for
all.
That can never happen until Hamas is destroyed. If Hamas is still in
place, they will kill everybody who wants to make peace with Israel.
They did it before. They have no desire, as Senator Van Hollen said, of
recognizing the Jewish State.
But I will close where I began. What Senator Schumer said on the
floor of the Senate is taking the country and the Senate down the wrong
road. This is not something any of us should be saying--calling on a
government to be toppled, basically, by its own people.
At the end of the day, Bibi is not the problem. The problem is
radical Islam wanting to kill every Jew they can find. The problem is
Iran, which has its mission to destroy the Jewish State and to purify
Islam.
I could spend hours talking about the Biden-Obama policy of
empowering the Ayatollah, but that is not for today.
So what I would say to what Senator Schumer said today--my response
to Senator Schumer: I am disappointed. You have done a lot of damage,
my friend, and you need to fix this.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate.