    [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 39 (Thursday, February 27, 2025)]
    [House]
    [Pages H907-H909]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                      IMPACT OF PRESIDENT ON PEACE PROCESS

      The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
    January 3, 2025, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
    Green) for 30 minutes.
      Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise.
      I rise today, Mr. Speaker, to first announce two pieces of
    legislation. Thereafter, I will go into my message, which will be the
    impact of President Trump's engagement in the peace process between
    Israel and the Palestinians.
      First, let's look at the two resolutions. The first resolution is our
    Black History Month resolution.
      I am proud to say that this resolution will be filed tomorrow, and
    this is the original Black History Month resolution for 2025. We have
    many persons who have signed up to cosponsor, but it is still not too
    late for additional persons to sign up.
      The theme is African Americans and labor. It deals with African
    Americans and labor in America. It will trace the history of labor from
    enslavement through current times.
      The second resolution is one that I am very proud to present. This is
    a resolution for slavery remembrance month. As you know, August 1619
    was the month and year that enslaved persons from Africa were
    introduced into the Colonies. Since that time, we have had an adverse
    impact on African Americans in the United States of America.
      We need to retrace some of the history of what actually happened, but
    not just on one day. We have a slavery remembrance day that we
    proposed. Now, we are proposing a slavery remembrance month. There is
    still time to sign on to this resolution, as well.
      We will file it tomorrow, so if Members desire to be original
    cosponsors of either of these two, they have until the close of
    business tomorrow or until we have our last opportunity to file
    tomorrow any type of legislation. I suggest by noon tomorrow for
    Members who want to file.
      Now, let me get to my message: the impact of the President on the
    peace process. I say again: the impact of the President on the peace
    process.
      The President, as it relates to this process, is not an honest
    broker. He is not an honest broker because an honest broker has to be
    impartial. The President has made it perspicuously clear that he is not
    impartial.
      He has already sided with Israel, and the President has every right
    to do that, to side with one side as opposed to another, but let's be
    clear about the role that he is playing. He is not playing the role of
    an honest broker.

      The President is not playing the role of a negotiator because the
    President does not seek to get input from the Palestinians. The
    President will get input from one side, that would be the Israelis, and
    he will make his decisions with the Israelis.
      It appears that there will be an all-or-nothing offer made. The
    President has gone so far as to say that certain things must be done,
    or certain conditions will manifest themselves.
      The President doesn't want peace. It appears to me that the President
    wants to stop the killing, and there is a difference between stopping
    the killing and peace.
      Peace requires more than the absence of tension, the absence of
    violence, the absence of killing. Peace requires justice. It requires
    justice. Stopping killing is not going to end the process because you
    won't have justice for all parties involved, and there must be justice
    for all parties involved if we are to have genuine peace between
    Palestinians and Israelis.
      The President appears to currently be engaging in a process of ethnic
    cleansing. This is where his thoughts are. He seems to believe that we
    can take Gaza from the Palestinians. He seems to believe that the
    Gazans can be relocated. Just place them someplace else. Give them nice
    homes in some other place. Let us, meaning the United States or Israel,
    have Gaza.
      Mr. Speaker, that won't happen because the Palestinians have made it
    very clear that they don't intend to leave their homeland, but there is
    more to it than simply replacing them, putting them someplace else. We
    have to think about what the President is saying.
      The President is making it clear that we are an existential threat to
    the creation of a Palestinian state because if you remove the
    Palestinians from the land that was once Palestine, they won't have a
    Palestinian state there, then we, indeed, are an existential threat to
    Palestine. In fact, if the language that the President is using as it
    relates to the Palestinians, if it were used as it relates to the
    Israelis, the President would have some serious problems.
      You cannot say with any degree of credibility that we ought to remove
    the Israelis from Israel, which is now in land that was once labeled
    ``Palestine.'' You can't say that. If you say ``from the river to the
    sea,'' you are saying that you are proclaiming an existential threat to
    exist as it relates to the State of Israel, the mere statement, whereas
    Israel's Knesset has already, by way of resolution, indicated that
    there will not be a Palestinian state in the land of what we now call
    Gaza, in the land of what we now call the West Bank, that there won't
    be a Palestinian state. If there is not going to be a Palestinian
    state, then Israel is declaring that it is an existential threat to the
    creation of a Palestinian state.
      The President doesn't want a Palestinian state. He is with the
    Israelis. The President wants Gaza. He wants the West Bank to be
    controlled and possibly become a part of Israel. This is not the way to
    achieve justice.
      Remember, you cannot have peace without having justice. You have
    heard

    [[Page H908]]

    the phrase, ``No justice, no peace.'' Well, there has to be justice for
    us to have peace, and the President is willing to sacrifice the
    Palestinians. He seems to be willing to sacrifice them because he has
    indicated as much, that if a certain thing doesn't happen, if hostages
    aren't returned by a certain time that he has chosen, that all hell
    will break loose.
      Well, that seems to indicate that he is willing to see an
    infiltration unlike we have not seen so far, something more than we
    have seen so far because, quite frankly, Gaza has been decimated. The
    roads have been destroyed. The bridges have been destroyed. The schools
    have been destroyed. The hospitals have been destroyed. The homes have
    been destroyed. People have been killed. Until we decide that we want
    peace, we are not going to have the kind of place that people should
    have as a homeland for Palestinians.
      There has to be peace. To have peace, there must be justice. To have
    justice, we have to at least decide that there are certain things that
    we are willing to do. Justice is going to require equal respect for the
    lives of all babies--equal respect for the lives of all babies.
      I will tell you that I, just as early as this morning, had tears well
    in my eyes when there was a story about the Israeli babies who were
    returned after they had been held hostage by Hamas.
      Hamas did a dastardly thing in taking babies as hostage. Israel has
    done nothing that would warrant Hamas to take babies as hostages. Then,
    for those babies to be returned in caskets, it is heartbreaking.
      Those parents had to suffer immeasurable heartache as a result of
    what happened to their children. Those babies were young babies,
    infants.
      Hamas is not--is not--an organization that seeks peace. If you are
    going to do these kinds of things, you are not seeking peace because
    what you did was not just. It was an injustice to take those babies.

                                  {time}  1330

      It was an injustice to keep those babies, and now you are returning
    them lifeless to their parents, and they have to suffer for the rest of
    their lives knowing what happened to their babies.
      You can't stop there. All babies have to be treated equally. The
    lives of all babies have to be treated equally. You cannot say that it
    is shameful and sinful for Hamas to do what they did to those Israeli
    babies and not condemn what Israel has done to the Palestinian babies.
      Babies have been bombed; body parts scattered all over. One parent
    just had the baby born and was about to register the baby. The parents
    come back, and the baby is no longer alive. All babies have to be
    treated equally. Their lives have to be respected in the same way,
    regardless as to where they are, where they are from, and what their
    ethnicity is. We cannot continue to believe that some babies have lives
    that are more valuable than others.
      Nothing Israel has done merits what Hamas did to the babies that they
    took hostage or other babies that may have been killed as well. Nothing
    that the Palestinians have done merits the killing of--nothing that the
    Israelis have done merits the killing of Palestinian babies to the
    extent that they have been killed.
      Palestinian babies, Palestinians cannot have done anything that would
    merit Israelis killing their babies to the same extent that they have.
    Israelis have to understand that Palestinian babies have lives that
    have to be respected to the same extent as they want Israeli babies'
    lives to be respected. By the same token, Palestinians have to respect
    Israeli babies' lives to the same extent that they want Palestinian
    lives to be respected. All babies have to be respected equally. All
    babies.
      Today, I want to say to the Israelis and the Palestinians: There will
    be no peace until you respect the babies equally. But you have got to
    do more than this and we have to do more because we have to rebuild
    Palestine.
      I say ``we.'' I believe the United States has to make a contribution,
    just as we contributed to the rebuilding of Japan after we dropped
    bombs on Japan, just as we have contributed to the rebuilding of other
    places when we have been involved in the destruction.
      We helped to destroy Palestine. Yes, I know that what Hamas did was
    dastardly. I understand that. It shouldn't have been done, but that did
    not give Israel the right to kill babies and innocent people to the
    extent that Israel has killed these babies and innocent people. We have
    to respect their lives.
      Now we have to respect their property. There has to be a home for
    Palestinians, and that home has to have some help from the United
    States because we sent our weaponry over there. We have to pay for
    weapons that were used to bomb the Palestinians. The bombs, many of
    them, were actually munitions that came from us.
      We have a duty to respect their lives and their property, and we have
    a duty to help to rebuild. This is something that we can't push off on
    others, and we can't just decide, Mr. President, that the Palestinians
    should not have a state and that we can just simply take their land.
    This land belongs to them. It was theirs in 1948.
      The majority of the people in Palestine in 1948 were not people who
    were there to have a State of Israel. People came into the place called
    Palestine and helped to build and construct the State of Israel. I have
    said that a two-state solution is a solution, but you can't have a two-
    state solution without respecting the babies that are Palestinian and
    the land that was once Palestine.
      We have got to give Palestinians a homeland, more specifically a
    state. Palestinians have the right to live there with sovereignty, not
    to be told what to do by others, not to have the flow of their
    electricity controlled by others, not to have others determine whether
    they can have ingress and egress. They have got to have a state.
      That means there has to be some negotiation. It can't just be
    dictation. The President wants to dictate what the policies will be and
    expect everybody to live happily thereafter. If we want true peace,
    then, Mr. President, you have got to cease to be a dictator and become
    a negotiator. You have to talk to the Palestinians and get their
    opinions about what they want, and you have got to decide that you
    cannot side with one side and conclude that that is going to give you
    the necessary strength to bring peace about.
      You may have calm, but you won't have peace, and you won't have the
    kind of peace that will be lasting if you just decide you are going to
    stop the killing. Stopping killing does not bring about peace. It just
    brings about an absence of a certain amount of tension.
      Dr. King reminded us that if you want peace, you have to have more
    than the absence of tension. You have got to have the presence of
    justice. The presence of justice must be accorded not only to the
    Israelis, they deserve justice. But to the Palestinians, they also
    deserve justice. Justice for both sides, peace for both sides. One
    country, one place; Palestinians on one side of that place, the
    Israelis on the other side. Two people, two homes, two sovereignties
    living side by side in peace.
      Finally, on this whole question, Dr. King also reminded us that we
    have to learn to live together as brothers--this is how he put it--or
    we will perish together as fools. Living together as brothers--and I
    would add and sisters--is an imperative. We no longer have, as Dr. King
    put it, a choice between violence or nonviolence. He said: We have a
    choice between nonviolence or nonexistence, and we are marching toward
    nonexistence.
      As we decide who is going to have certain pieces of land and how land
    is going to be divided, many countries who are viewing this are
    concluding that to protect themselves, they are going to have to have
    the ultimate weapon. Just as North Korea made that decision, others are
    making that decision. I don't support any of those decisions. I don't
    support any nuclear weapons. I would like to see the absence of nuclear
    weapons across the globe, but I also understand that they exist. I
    understand that others are going to want them to protect themselves
    from us, from the United States, from Israel. They are going to want
    them to protect themselves from other countries that have them.

      Friends, it is no longer the choice between nonviolence or violence.
    The choice is going to be between nonviolence or nonexistence, and we
    have to learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will
    perish together

    [[Page H909]]

    as fools. Those were the words of Dr. Martin Luther King.
      I stand for peace, peace between Israelis and Palestinians. I stand
    for loving all babies the same. The lives of all babies should be
    treated equally. Hamas shouldn't hide behind babies, but that doesn't
    give you the right to just kill babies indiscriminately. Thousands of
    babies have been killed. You can't do that. That is antithetical to
    having a just society where peace presides.
      I present to you my belief that if we are to have true peace, there
    has to be justice; and if there is to be justice, all babies have to be
    treated equally. All babies have to be respected equally. All babies'
    lives are equally as important. It doesn't matter where they are or who
    they are.
      Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
      The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from
    engaging in personalities toward the President and to direct their
    remarks to the Chair and not to a perceived viewing audience.

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