[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 176 (Thursday, October 23, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7735-S7736]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GAZA CEASE-FIRE
Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, every single one of us--every Member of the
U.S. Senate, my fellow Vermonters, all Americans, people around the
world--are absolutely thrilled by the cease-fire in Gaza.
After 2 years of relentless bombing, after 2 years of horror for the
hostages and their families, the bombing has largely stopped, and the
hostages are home. This is extraordinary. I salute everyone involved in
getting us to this day, including President Trump.
But let's be clear, there is more work to be done. The only way this
cease-fire will succeed is if it is the beginning of a relentless,
tireless process that aims to get us to the two-state solution--two
states for two peoples; a safe and democratic Jewish state of Israel
alongside a sovereign state for the Palestinians that are indigenous to
the land where they now live as envisioned in the President's 20-point
plan and has been U.S. policy for over 50 years.
So the question before us is, Will all who are involved, particularly
the U.S. Government, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the Palestinian
Authority, U.S. partners in the Gulf, and our European allies--will
everyone do every single thing possible to make that success of a
lasting peace through a two-state solution a likelihood?
Let me be candid. I am extremely alarmed at what we are already
seeing since the cease-fire. On the Israeli side, Mr. Netanyahu is
continuing to dial-up or down the delivery of urgently needed food or
medicine depending on what his political desires of the moment are.
After 2 years of already having kept food out, largely for starving
kids, that has to be provided with the 600 trucks a day unabated,
continuously, and regularly. At the same time, Hamas is score-settling,
is committing public executions, and intimidating the Palestinians who
yearn for peace and a return to some degree of normalcy.
The impediments to peace are deep, and they are clear. So we need to
ask ourselves: What do we need to do to make sure that the violence and
the destruction does not resume? In Gaza, one thing is absolutely
essential. Mr. Netanyahu must stop blocking the medicine and the food
for starving kids and Palestinians. We cannot condone Israeli military
and the instructions of the Netanyahu government from illegally
blocking international food aid from getting through Rafah. Yet we see
a continuation of children facing severe malnutrition and hunger. We
also see kids who are sick and had the promise of getting healthcare,
cancer treatment, women who need maternity facilities or basic
medicines and treatments still not having access to them.
The Netanyahu government cannot be allowed to, once again, turn on
and off the supply of food and medicine and use it as a military tool.
Withholding fruit and vegetables and other food from a million hungry
kids is not a military response; it is a collected punishment.
Next, Mr. Netanyahu must finally--finally, once and for all--stop the
bombing in Gaza. The IDF's own data shows that more than five out of
six people killed by IDF bombs supplied by the U.S. over the past 2
years were civilian casualties. Those government bombings that have
been renewed in Gaza this week, killing nearly a hundred and injuring
even more after two soldiers were killed in Rafah, has to stop.
These types of response bombings that were so frequent before the
cease-fire--disproportionate and illegal, by and large--are no more
legal and as disproportionate when they are occurring after the cease-
fire and jeopardize the stability and survivability of the cease-fire.
So we should be calling on the Netanyahu government to reopen the
medical evacuation corridor so that those Palestinian kids in Gaza with
traumatic war wounds--bullets in their bodies and missing limbs--can be
evacuated to Palestinian church hospitals in Jerusalem.
[[Page S7736]]
The violence and settler attacks on the West Bank also represent an
ominous threat to the cease-fire and a threat to fulfilling a true
vision of peace. Gaza and the West Bank are part of what will be a
separate Palestinian State. That violence occurring at the hands of
settlers has to be stopped by the Netanyahu government.
Just this week in the West Bank, we saw violent attacks by mass club-
wielding settlers on Palestinian villagers and harvesters. They even
attacked the very same village that our Ambassador, Mike Huckabee, had
visited and promised to protect only a few months before.
This photograph, taken only a few days ago, is the result of an
illegal Israeli settler beating a 55-year-old woman who was harvesting
olives on her family's ancestral lands, beating her with that club
without mercy, without restraint. Her name is Afaf Abu Alia. She is a
mother, and she is a victim of violence. This just happened days ago.
By the way, October marks the start of the olive harvest season
across the West Bank. Since the start of the harvest, where folks have
to go from their homes to the fields, illegal Israeli settlers have
reportedly staged 158 assaults against Palestinian farmers, and they
destroyed nearly 800 trees. These trees, as you know, are nurtured over
generations, just like the ones on the Mount of Olives. Many
Palestinian families depend on them as their only source of income.
The violence, by the way, also impacts Americans. If Mr. Netanyahu is
serious about working with the President in supporting the cease-fire
that he did agree to, he will take action to hold accountable those
responsible for the Americans killed by Israeli forces and illegal
settlers; Americans like Saif Musallet, a Florida teenager who was on
vacation visiting family when he was attacked, and he was killed by
illegal settlers.
Mr. Netanyahu must also finally help the United States investigate
the killing of the American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot
by an Israeli sniper from a couple of hundred yards away, nowhere near
any Israeli troops.
The Palestinian State envisioned by the cease-fire requires that Mr.
Netanyahu also end the constant expansion of settlements into the West
Bank. The Israeli Government must stop demolishing Palestinian homes,
sometimes using bulldozers paid for by American taxpayers. Yet the
Netanyahu government is going full steam ahead. This is an immense
impediment to peace.
And to be certain, Hamas, too, must lay down its arms. It must
refrain from violence. That is an incredible threat to the cease-fire.
Ultimately, Hamas has got to go. Hamas violence is that threat to
peace. It is a threat to the Palestinians living in Gaza who yearn for
peace and yearn for an opportunity to rebuild where they live and have
their kids be back in school and to be safe.
The cease-fire acknowledges that there must be a force that has
sufficient authority to quell Hamas violence. This is the peacekeeping
force that was in the 20-point Presidential plan. If we are going to be
successful, we have to redouble our efforts to stand that force up and
make certain that all the signatories to that peace plan do their part
to make certain that can happen.
President Trump's leadership to help achieve a cease-fire--that
leadership must be redoubled to achieve a durable peace and a lasting
peace for the Israelis and the Palestinians. To have this stop on the
day the agreement was signed without then redoubling efforts to face
the difficult challenges that await resolution after the cease-fire
will result in failure. So I call on the President and I urge all of us
to do every single thing we can to stay focused on the implementation
of the peace plan and not turn away as though this is yesterday's
problem because if we don't do that, it will be tomorrow's problem once
again.
I urge all of us to accept the burden of leadership that is
absolutely required for the well-being of the entire region but for the
promise of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and for the promise
of the Palestinian people living alongside in peace with Israeli
neighbors.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
____________________