[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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