[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10409-10410]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           TWO-STATE SOLUTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, every time I visit Israel, I have such 
mixed feelings. It is a land of positive opportunities surrounded by 
intractable controversies.
  The big question looming is how to achieve a two-state solution for 
the Israelis and the Palestinians with appropriate integrity so that 
they are actually separate countries. This has raised additional 
questions because of the ambiguity from the Trump administration about 
whether or not what, for years, has been American policy supporting a 
two-state solution is any longer a priority of theirs.

[[Page 10410]]

  For several years, I have been deeply concerned about the looming 
environmental crisis in Gaza. This is a small strip of land about twice 
the size of Washington, D.C., but it is home to 1.9 million people, 
most of whom are leading a wretched existence, even more so since 
Hamas, the political faction, has seized control. That is Israel's 
implacable enemy which now controls Gaza.
  They have little regard for their own people, using them as pawns, 
spending scarce resources, digging tunnels to try to kidnap Israeli 
children and soldiers, and launching rockets to terrorize Israeli 
communities in the surrounding areas.

                              {time}  1015

  Gaza has reached a crisis point in dealing with water and sanitation. 
The groundwater is so polluted that virtually all the water is unfit to 
drink--polluted by sewage, waste runoff, and seawater encroachment. 
They are pumping four times as much water out of the aquifer than can 
be replaced naturally, and seawater from the Mediterranean is 
encroaching.
  We are told that, by the end of the year, there will probably be no 
sources of drinking water that are fit to drink. By 2020, the entire 
water system will be permanently damaged. Because of problems with 
drinking water that is not fit and raw sewage that is not treated, 
there is a real likelihood that we could have an outbreak of something 
like cholera, threatening not just the people in Gaza, but the Israelis 
as well.
  Several times recently, sewage from Gaza has washed up on Israeli 
beaches and forced the shutdown of water treatment plants from 
desalinization. The Israeli military thinks this is a security threat.
  In the course of this visit, I had an opportunity to put the question 
directly to Prime Minister Netanyahu; Jibril Rajoub, the number three 
person in the Palestinian Authority; and United States Ambassador 
Friedman about this pending crisis and the need for urgent action. 
Sadly, each of those conversations revealed I won't say indifference, 
but certainly a lack of urgency and no willingness for anybody to take 
the lead and break the impasse.
  This is not a problem that is beyond our ability to solve. There are 
opportunities to increase electricity for pumping water and treating 
sewage. There is the capacity to build some smaller reservoirs to be 
able to mix saltwater with freshwater and extend the supplies.
  For Israel, water is a mystery they have solved. They are the most 
water-rich country on the face of the planet, with very sophisticated 
technology. They could provide additional resources. Around the edges, 
the United States does some work with USAID, but it is not a priority 
for the United States at this point.
  Mr. Speaker, I return perplexed. We will continue to push with the 
Israelis, the United States Government, the Palestinians, and with NGOs 
whenever we have the opportunity. But it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, if 
we cannot bring people together to solve a pending crisis with tools 
that are available to us now, at a relatively modest cost, what hope do 
we have of being able to work cooperatively to implement the two-state 
solution and be able to bring peace and security to Israel and the 
Palestinians?
  I would hope my colleagues would lend their voices to this question.

                          ____________________