[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.