[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 21894]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



 U.S. SHOULD BE RESPONSIVE TO ISRAELI POSITION IN MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, I am here to express my 
disagreement with the decision of the President of the United States to 
have the United States abstain on a resolution that was unfairly 
critical of the State of Israel in the U.N. Security Council. I 
recognize that the administration worked hard using the threat of a 
veto to make that resolution less obnoxious, but it was still mistaken, 
and I want to express why I think so.
  It was mistaken on two levels. First of all, on its own terms it was 
unfair. Yes, Israeli forces and Jewish residents of Israel have in this 
terrible turmoil, some of them, done things they should not have done. 
Violence is not easily controllable. But there have also been terrible 
acts of violence, unjustified and provoked, on the part of the 
Palestinians, and, in Lebanon, on the part of Hezbollah, and a 
resolution which puts all the blame on one side when there are mistakes 
made on both sides is wrong.
  But it is even more inaccurate and inadequate because it focuses too 
much on the tactical and not on the central point. The central point is 
that the government of Israel has been for the past year engaged in the 
most forthcoming peace offers in the history of the Middle East, and 
the tragedy is that this outreach on the part of the Israeli government 
to make peace on several fronts has been so overwhelmingly rejected.
  We had the spectacle of an Israeli withdrawal in Lebanon which the 
Arab states had long called for being treated almost as if it were a 
further error by Israel. The effort by Israel to be conciliatory there 
brought the worst kind of brutal reaction.
  With regard to the Palestinians, let us be clear what the situation 
is. Fifty-two years ago, when the U.N. declared that there should be 
two states in the area, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, the 
overwhelming reaction of the Arabs was to reject that and to seek to 
destroy the Jewish state. Over the ensuing years, Israel was forced 
time and again to defend itself. In the course of that effort, it grew. 
It grew to try to get more defensible borders; but in every case, it 
was acting in self-defense.
  What then happened was the government of Prime Minister Barak decided 
to build on previous peacemaking efforts of the government of Begin and 
of others and tried to make an ultimate agreement with the 
Palestinians, and the Barak government went further in its offer than 
anyone thought it was possible for the Israeli society to support. 
Israel is a democracy, and you need public support. But they obviously 
felt, those in power in Israel, and I commend them for it, that it was 
worth some extra push to try to get peace.
  Unfortunately, the result apparently was not simply a rejection of 
the specific offer with the wholly unrealistic demand that a 
democratically elected government of Israel give up physical and legal 
sovereignty over parts of Jerusalem, an impossibility, but also now 
with an assault on the government of Israel by the Palestinians, which 
we are told is motivated by a distrust of the peace process, by a 
denial of Israel's legitimacy.
  We are not here talking about tactical issues. We are not talking 
about a reaction by the decision of Ariel Sharon to be provocative, and 
I wish he had not decided to be provocative, but he had a legal right 
to do that, and certainly the reaction to it is not now a reaction to 
Ariel Sharon's visit; it is a manifestation of great hostility on the 
part of much of the Arab world to the very existence of Israel, and 
that is the ultimate tragedy.
  Some in Israel and elsewhere thought the Barak government went too 
far in its efforts. I think the current situation vindicates them in 
this sense: it may well be that what we are seeing is an outburst of 
hostility towards the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state that 
was there and was going to come in any case. Had it come a couple of 
years ago, there would have been people saying, well, the Israelis 
should have been willing to try to make peace.
  When it comes now, with the Barak government having been so 
forthcoming, so conciliatory, and, remember, we are talking here about 
a state which was forced to defend itself in a war, which gained some 
territory in those self-defense wars, and is now voluntarily giving up 
much of that territory, I do not think there is an example in history 
of a nation forced to defend itself and picking up adjacent territory 
being as conciliatory as the Israelis have been. And if in fact this 
approach, such a willingness to make peace, is so bitterly rejected, if 
in fact what we are seeing, and we are told this is not just anger over 
Sharon, anger over a particular this or that or the settlement, but a 
frustration and a rejection of the whole notion of peace, then that is 
a sad lesson we have to draw.
  I think the policy of the United States government ought to be very 
clear: Israel has a right to exist. It has a right to make policies in 
the peacemaking process that leave it defensible and that protect its 
right to maintain control and sovereignty in Jerusalem; and, if in 
fact, as good a settlement as Barak offered is met with this sort of 
rejection, our response should be to be totally supportive of the 
government of Israel's position.

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