The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“ISRAEL” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H10224-H10230 on Sept. 6, 2007.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ISRAEL
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. WEINER. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to ponder a hypothetical. Imagine for a moment that a small town in your district, whether you represent a rural or urban district or suburban district you can imagine this hypothetical, but it's an unimaginable concept to many of us in the United States. Imagine if a town in that district was hit by a rocket, just landed out of the sky, launched from a neighboring town, or if you're near the border, launched from a neighboring country. Imagine for a moment how you would react as an elected official in that town, imagine for a moment how you would act as a parent of people in that town, imagine how you would act if you were government from that town.
Well, for one small town in the southern part of Israel, it's not something they need to imagine. Let me show you a map of Israel and point to a small town called Sderot. It's right down here near the Negev, right along the border of the Gaza Strip.
Sderot is a town of 24,000 people. It is not a wealthy town; it's basically a working class town. Like I said, not very big. But in the last 5 years, not one, not two, but 2,000 rockets have landed on that town, all of them launched from the Gaza Strip.
Now, as you ponder what it is that you would do, let me tell you a little bit about the effect it has had to the people of Sderot. Eight people have been killed as these qassam rockets have fallen. What is a qassam rocket? A qassam rocket is a fairly primitive rocket that is made out of basically a plumbing pipe with four stabilizers and filled with about a pound or so of shrapnel, that when it explodes, it blows the shrapnel all around.
This is a picture of some of the qassam rockets that have landed in Sderot over the last 5 years. This is what the back of the local police station looks like. They keep them all and they mark it when they land. Now, eight people have been killed by these rockets, three of them children, dozens have been wounded. There have been 155 of these rockets landing in this town just since June, when Hamas was elected as the representative party of the people of the West Bank, and some would argue Gaza as well. You see this small strip of land? That's the Gaza Strip. Lobbed one by one by one into this town of Sderot. Well, as you think about how your citizens might deal, let me tell you a little bit about how the citizens of Sderot have dealt.
For one thing, when there is any kind of notice that they get, and they have a rather primitive system of lasers that detect when there is heat out in the desert that seems extraordinary, a notice goes to the local police department and then they send out tzeva adom, tzeva adom, which just means ``code red.'' Then you have about 15 seconds. That's how much time the people of Sderot have to respond. They can do a couple of things. They can run into these concrete shells that have been built all throughout town. The way we might have phone booths in our towns, they have concrete structures that are called life shields. They are supposed to pull over or stop their car where they are and run to a building or wall. It's the only part of Israel where it's illegal to wear your seat belt because you have to be able to run out of your car as quickly as possible to avoid the rocket attacks.
And kids, of course, they're taught the old 1950s-era American idea of ``duck and cover,'' except when it comes to the children of Sderot, it would be more aptly described as ``duck and suffer.'' One in three children in that town suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. It is not coincidental or accidental that seven rockets landed in that town on the first day of school this past Sunday. There was a rocket attack today.
It is hard to find pictures that truly can express what it is like when a rocket falls on an elementary school; but this is a picture that was taken during a rocket attack last year, children essentially cowering in a corner of their school and holding their heads for their lives.
You know, it is easy to describe in dry terms what you're supposed to do when a rocket lands on your town, and thank God many of us will never know what that is like. But imagine what it is like when there are hundreds of them, and now thousands of them over the course of the last couple of years.
Now, we here in Washington, we frequently think of things through the lens of what should the government response be. Well, what would your town's government response be if it was attacked by a foreign power day after day after day with rockets? Well, unfortunately for the people of Israel, there isn't a great deal that they can do, particularly since the international community has shown very little concern about the matter. The United Nations, perhaps we can urge them to pass a resolution of condemnation. They've been unwilling to do anything. You might try to figure out what ways you can make your residents more safe. The Israeli Government sent 200 soldiers to this town of 24,000 people to escort their hundreds of kids to school. You might want to try to figure out where they're getting the artillery necessary to be launching these attacks. As you can see here, the border is only with one other country, and that's Egypt. Time and time again there have been found tunnels that lead into the Gaza Strip providing weaponry. You might want to crack down on Egypt to make sure that they stop providing the artillery.
But one thing for sure is you would do something. And sooner or later, I think it's fair to say that all of us, if we were put in this circumstance where there was one or even two or three at most rockets falling in our districts, we would demand that something be done. Well, I believe that it is time for those of us in the United States to realize that terrorism falls in all kinds of ways every day that barely gets a notice.
When several of these rockets fell in Sderot on the first day of school, you might have missed it in your neighborhood newspaper because it is so commonplace. It should never be, in 2007, commonplace for one nation to lob missiles down on the other.
Now, it comes as little surprise that just in the several months that Hamas took over control of the Gaza Strip that there has been an escalation in the number of rockets. But I also think that we need, as a country that is in solidarity with Israel and the many things that they're trying to do, you know, it's not the purpose of this map, but you can see that this is a nation that is surrounded with enemies. On the northern border they face Hezbollah, which declared war across the international border and lobbed weapons upon them in the Lebanese war.
You see here they're dealing with problems in the Gaza Strip. Now, I should point out that much of the escalation has happened in the period since Israel withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip. There are no Israeli forces there anymore. Since the Israeli forces left, the rocket attacks have gone up.
So what can the Israelis do? Well, I guess they could reoccupy the Gaza Strip, and you can imagine the public condemnation and hue and cry that might occur if that happened. I guess they could try as best they could to track where these rockets are being fired from and try to go in as quickly as possible and counterattack. Well, it's not a very practical thing to do, perhaps they would argue. But one of the things they are considering doing is saying, look, we're going to cut off the power and supply to the Gaza Strip; we're going to make the citizens of Gaza Strip make a choice whether they're going to have terrorists in their midst or not.
Well, one thing that we can do, as far away from the front of the Sderot conflict as we are, is we could make it very clear that if we were in the same position, we would not be calling upon ourselves to show great restraint. We would try to figure out how do we solve this problem.
And so we, as the United States of America and the State Department, when they call upon Israel, show restraint, show restraint, don't retaliate, maybe that's a reasonable argument after one or two or 10 rockets. Now, I think we have to realize that what Israel is engaged in, what this tiny town is engaged in is playing defense in the war on terrorism every single day without much support and without much help.
So I take the floor today with my good friend from Nevada to say that, while we are not being asked to live in a town like Sderot, we should be mindful of the idea that such towns exist in Israel, that it is not just the province of people who live along the Lebanese border that are facing terrorism, it's not just the province of people who drive along the roads even in the inner country of Israel who find themselves being under attack. It's a daily attack on this tiny town.
Now, they don't have C-SPAN; I doubt they have C-SPAN in Sderot. But they do listen very carefully when the United States of America, when the Secretary of State, when the President, when elected officials stand up and say, listen, we don't envy the situation that Israel is in, but we understand it. And we understand that retaliation is sometimes a difficult thing to contemplate, but sometimes it's necessary. We know that if we were put in the same position and suddenly the good folks in Canada started lobbing missiles over the New York border, I would be demanding that we respond. If the folks who live in Arizona or Texas started getting attacked with missiles coming over the border, certainly none of us would be saying, show forbearance.
If these children were being forced to cower at rocket attacks day after day after day in any town in the United States, we would understand perfectly well that something needed to be done to stem the tide. But there are other things we can do. We can say we are not going to continue to be a supporter of Egypt, as we have, if they continue to allow their nation to be essentially a wide open font for terrorist activities. We are going to understand that, while it was every right, and sometimes I'm criticized for making this image, it's every right of the people of the Palestinian territories to choose to elect Hamas as their leaders, but it is also the right of the international community to say that this is what we expected would happen. We would have an increase in the international terrorism that emerged from the Gaza Strip, and now it has happened. And if we had a terrorist government in Canada, we wouldn't hesitate for a moment to see it as a threat to our security.
We can also understand that the people of Sderot's fight is all of our fight. When the United Nations is, resolution after resolution, condemning Israel for its heavy hand in this or its heavy hand in that, when it convenes a conference to talk about the plight of the Palestinians, putting aside the plight of the Israelis, they do a disservice to the basic common sense about who it is that is doing the attacking, who it is that is launching the missiles and who it is that is on the other side.
{time} 1745
The other thing that we can do is make sure that weapons like this are never armed with high-tech guidance systems. Right now, the administration is putting the final touches on a plan to present to the United States Congress that would sell missile guidance systems, $20 million worth, to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has been one of the foremost advocates for Hamas in the world. They fund them. They support them. They provide them aid and comfort.
Imagine for a moment if these missiles weren't being lobbed relatively indiscriminately in the direction of schools, hospitals, shopping centers and synagogues, but imagine if they had laser guidance systems provided to the Saudis and then leaked to them, because that is what happens in that part of the world. Imagine this number of rockets that are hitting people and installations and churches, well, synagogues and not just falling to the Earth.
We can stop that sale. We in Congress can stop that sale. And we should do everything we can to do so. Ms. Berkley and I circulated a letter that over 115 Members of Congress signed onto saying this is a bad idea to be selling weapons, high-tech weapons, to the foremost exporter of terrorism in the world. But tonight when we lay down our heads, we should know that not far away, 2,000 miles away in Sderot, children are going to be walking to school, and most likely if tomorrow is like today was, they are going to hear a siren go off. They are going to hear a voice over the loudspeakers saying in Hebrew,
``condition red, condition red'' which meant that they have to go find cover somewhere. Imagine raising your child in that kind of environment. Imagine the outrage that you would feel as a parent or resident of that town.
We should never forget that we are not going to be safe just because we don't have rockets falling on us every single day. So long as there are entities in the world that find comfort in being able to do that day in and day out, we all suffer. We admire Israel for what it does. It is probably the last remaining country besides the United States of America that every day is trying to fight terrorism. Our friends in Europe turn it on and turn it off as they might be willing to. Frankly, it is the United States and Israel every day.
But as much as we fight and as much as we invest in resources, as much as we honor the men and women of the armed services, 150,000 fighting for us in Iraq and Afghanistan, imagine if every single day we weren't having to go out and fight that fight, but it was landing in our community. That should be the lens that we look at this conflict through. There are complications. It is a nuanced and difficult thing. It is difficult trying to persuade people who are democracies in Lebanon, democracies in the West Bank and Gaza, that they shouldn't be voting for people whose campaign slogan is ``I want to drive Israel into the sea.'' It is discouraging.
It is complicated when you have a nation like Jordan for whom many of these people would consider their home country and have them take little responsibility for those people who are in the West Bank, as well as for those people who are in Gaza. It is a difficult, complicated part of the world. But there are some things that are immutable. And I would hope that we would all agree that one of the immutable things is that under no circumstance should any country have to withstand tens and tens, and hundreds, eventually thousands of rocket attacks on its land just because it is a small town and just because most people have never heard of it. My colleague, Congressman Wexler, and I had a long debate about how to pronounce it. He said
``Sderot.'' I said ``Sderot.'' It is unclear. It was written originally in Hebrew. It probably appears in the Bible somewhere. Perhaps we can find an authority on that.
These are not the most influential people even in Israel. But it is troubling to me. I think I speak for my colleague, Ms. Berkley, that day in and day out these attacks happen, and none of us even notice any more. Well, the children and the adults and the people of that community notice. They notice. They are traumatized by it. I think it is our obligation as citizens of the world to say that while you can have different viewpoints about where borders should be and you can have different viewpoints about the relative gripes of the Palestinians or the gripes of Hamas or who should prevail, Fatah or Hamas, or whether or not the Egyptians are doing enough, or whether or not the Syrians are doing enough, or whether or not they are all just exporting terrorism in one form or the other, I would hope that we could agree that it is an international abomination that this is allowed to happen.
I would be glad to yield to my colleague from Nevada.
Ms. BERKLEY. I want to thank my good friend from New York, Anthony Weiner. As usual, I am not sure that my presence is needed here. You have done such an eloquent job explaining the situation as it is. I am afraid I have to agree with our colleague, Mr. Wexler, and pronounce the little town the way he does, but the sentiment is the same.
I wish you were with us, Mr. Weiner, 3 weeks ago when there was a congressional trip to Israel. We had the opportunity to go to Sderot and see for ourselves firsthand exactly what you are speaking of. I want to share with you my impressions. I have been to Israel 15 times, but that was the first time that I had ever gone to that little border town and met the people, heard what they had to say, but I did. I am glad that I had the opportunity so I could share it with you and our colleagues now.
We met in a strategic area of Sderot where we were able to look into the Gaza. It is less than a mile away. They live Palestinian and Israeli next door to one another. We met with a family who has lived there for a number of years and has endured the 2,000 rocket attacks that have taken place, that have been perpetrated against the citizens of this community for the last 5 years, 2,000 rocket attacks. The last one, as you said, happening as late as today as children were going to school.
Now, Hamas and Islamic jihad have the timing down pretty well if they don't have the accuracy, because the rocket attacks, the missile attacks, on this small Israeli town take place in the morning hours when children are headed to school and parents are headed to work. Then there's a lull. If there is going to be another attack, it is usually when people are coming home from work and their children are coming back from school.
We met a family from Sderot, a wife, a mother and her children. I listened to this mother tell us what it is like on a daily basis, the fear she has every time she sends her children out to walk to school, how they can't go outside and play for fear that there will be an incoming missile that might indiscriminately hit any one of them on any given day. The very inaccuracy of these rockets make them something to fear. After the last attack that she told us about, she grabbed her child, and she fell on him in an effort to save him. When it was over, the little boy looked at his mommy. He said, ``Mommy, don't ever fall on me to save me again. Because if anything was going to happen to you, what would I do without you?''
{time} 1800
The children of this little town are suffering in more ways than you and I can possibly imagine. While it is true that of the 2,000 attacks in the last 5 years, eight people have died, and I have been told only eight people is not so bad, three of those eight were children, if you are one of the eight, or their families, it is not bad, it is devastating. And if you are the parent or grandparent of one of those three children, whose only crime was being an Israeli child walking to school one day, it is a horrible, horrible thing to endure.
So the fact that there hasn't been the mayhem and the injuries that are visible to the eye doesn't make this any worse because of the psychological damage to the people of this community and to their children, many of who suffer from PTSD.
I sit on the Veterans' Affairs Committee. We listen to testimony of our troops coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from PTSD. As horrible as that is, we understand it. We expect it. It is going to happen. But as a 5, 6, 7 year-old kid, to be suffering from PTSD, from not being able to sleep at night for fear that there is going to be a rocket attack on their home, afraid to go to school, afraid to sit in your classroom, parents losing their jobs because they can't stay at work when they hear that siren go off, they want to rush to the school where they know that their children are studying, for the hope that if, God forbid, anything happens, they can save their child, that is not a way to live. Nobody should live that way.
The reason that the Congressional delegation met with this family and others in this little town was because they wanted to share with us what was going on because they feel they have been forgotten, not only by their own government, but they wanted their government and the United States, their most reliable ally, and the people of this world community to recognize what is going on, and to help them, help them in some way. They implored us to do something to stop these rocket attacks.
Now, you mentioned the fact that about 2 years and 3 weeks ago on August 15th Israel unilaterally disengaged from the Gaza. It became untenable to secure 7,000 settlers from 1.4 million Palestinians, so the Israelis made a decision in the name of peace to unilaterally disengage from the Gaza.
The hope was this, Mr. Weiner. The hope was that the Palestinian people in the Gaza would recognize they had a golden opportunity to demonstrate to the world that they were capable of governance and they would use this opportunity to repair the infrastructure, build schools, start healing their economy, build housing and hospitals for the Palestinian people, make it possible for 1.4 million Palestinians to have a future, a dream of their own that wasn't mayhem and killing and corruption.
Unfortunately, we have not seen that. What we have seen, and it is more and more with each passing day, is that Hamas is using the Gaza and the Palestinian people as a human fortress as they continue to and increase lobbing rockets and missiles into Israel from strategic locations in the Gaza.
Why do the Palestinian people have to continue to suffer and live under these conditions? Are there no Palestinian leaders willing to step up and say this is not what I want for my children, it is not what I want to do to Israeli children? We have an obligation to be so much more than a launching pad against Israeli border towns like Sderot.
What are the Israelis expected to do? The people of Sderot are demanding that the Israeli government do something, that they stop this carnage, this mayhem, this indiscriminate killing and damage.
Well, we can examine the options of the Israelis. They can go back into Gaza, as you stated. I don't think that is a viable option. The Israelis don't want to reoccupy the Gaza. They can launch strategic attacks against those locations that the Kassam rockets are being launched from. But, as you know, they can be launched very quickly, and the perpetrators disappear within moments. And if they do that and accidentally hit an innocent Palestinian family, there would be hell to pay for that. So that isn't the best possible option either.
So, what is left? The Israelis provide the water and the sewage system and the electricity and power to the Gaza for 1.4 million Palestinians to enjoy some quality of life. They can cut those services off and 1.4 million Palestinians can suffer, because Hamas and Islamic Jihad have used their fellow Palestinians as nothing more than a cruel shield behind which they launch indiscriminate attacks against innocent Israeli civilians, men, women and children, and then they use the Palestinian people as buffers to protect them from any retaliation that the Israelis may wish to do in order to protect their own people.
Mr. WEINER. Reclaiming my time, I think you have raised the essential question, why is it that people are attacking Sderot? What is the great political fight that is going on that leads people to be launching missiles out of Gaza into Sderot?
There was once upon a time a conflict over whether or not Israel should be occupying this territory. They are not. What is it now that the fight is over? What is it, now that Hamas has been elected and there has been this dramatic increase in them, what is the objective of those people who are committing these acts of terrorism? It is no longer a border dispute. The Gaza strip, the Israelis have said okay, it is yours. Take it. Take it and control it, govern it, be responsible for it on your own.
It also raises another question. Hamas was elected in the West Bank and Gaza. This notion that they only control the Gaza, the West Bank is under someone else's control, remember now, this is a new government under a democracy, and I largely have agreed with the President when he has said, you know, democracy is a virtue that we should try to encourage throughout the world.
Well, while there is a lot of complaints you can make about the people that they chose, this was a pretty free and clear election. No one has accused them of cooking the books or stealing the election. If anything, Fattah was in control of more of the apparatus, they should have won.
So now Hamas has been elected and there has been a dramatic increase of attacks. These are the numbers just since June. Every week, 7, 14, 12. This is a week. This is not over the course of a month, this is just over the course of each week how much there has been. And the question has to be, what is now the fight over? What is it that the terrorists, what is it that Hamas, what is it the people here are trying to do?
Well, could it be could it be that the people here in Gaza are always going to attack the citizens of Israel. What is then the logical extension our policy? It is fine to say, all right, let's try to figure it out. The Saudis have put forth this plan and said let's return the country to the 1967 borders. Maybe that is the solution.
Well, the Lebanese border is no longer under contest. The United Nations decided where the line should be. Israel said you are wrong, but we are going to observe your line.
The Palestinians said the Gaza Strip is ours. The Israelis said, well, we don't believe you can secure it and it won't be safe for us to leave, but we are going to leave anyway. So now you have people crossing over from Lebanon and taking prisoners and declaring war. You have the Palestinians electing a terrorist organization and increasing the amount of attacks.
What is it they want? This is not, my colleagues, a basic border dispute any more. Now you can only conclude if they are attacking a small town of 22,000 people just because they can, that their objective is going to be under every circumstance, whenever given the opportunity, they are going to attack.
Now, I don't say that to drag us into a larger discussion about what the ultimate solution to this challenge is, except to say for many Americans who look at this part of the world and don't see the nuances, they say can't they just work something out there? Just kind of find a border that works for everyone.
Well, Sderot is nowhere near the border here. It has never been under Palestinian control, ever.
Ms. BERKLEY. It is not in dispute.
Mr. WEINER. Unless you believe, which some people may, that all of Israel should be under Arab control. Then you don't believe in this existential sense that Israel should believe at all.
Ms. BERKLEY. Of course, Hamas' charter says exactly that, that Israel does not have a right to exist. They refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist. So if Israel doesn't exist then the Israelis don't exist, and they can do anything they want in their minds when it comes to the people of Sderot.
Mr. WEINER. And I think the gentlewoman is right, except in her pronunciation, which was confirmed with the embassy earlier today that there is no T and it is Sderot. But that is another whole conversation, which is why I would never get elected to the Knesset from that district.
Ms. BERKLEY. Or to the First Congressional District in Nevada.
Mr. WEINER. That is probably right. But the point is, to be serious here, we have heard a great deal here recently about the upcoming meetings that are going to be going on with foreign secretaries to try to resolve and prop up Abu Mazen, who is the leader of the Fattah faction that lost the election, but who many people in the United States, and many people in the world community, feel is kind of a better choice than Hamas.
Whether or not he is or isn't or whether or not he speaks for anyone or not, it is beyond dispute that Hamas holds sway in the Gaza Strip. It is also beyond dispute that they won for reasons that can be explained a lot of different ways. They won. They are the representative people of the Palestinians. We may like Abu Mazen more, but he doesn't seem to speak for as many people.
But before I yield to the gentlewoman, I just want to point out that for people who say well, maybe if Israel left the Gaza Strip to Palestinian control, this would be resolved. As the gentlewoman from Nevada pointed out, been there, done that. And, remember, many people argued that it would be a mistake for the Israelis to acquiesce to the Palestinians' request because they would just use this as a launching ground for terrorism.
Well, those people turned out to be right, and, unfortunately, rather than saying okay, we are going to accept this as our Nation and we are going to show that we can sustain ourselves and not be a hostile neighbor, it has instead led to this, which is a dramatic increase in the amount of attacks that have gone on since the Palestinians took over the province of their own area.
Ms. BERKLEY. There are a few points that I would like to make in response to what you said. You know, when the Saudis come with this plan, and look, any peace plan is better than no peace at all, but let us keep in mind, in addition to the fact that Israel is no longer in Lebanon, and, remember, Hezbollah supposedly was created in an effort to get the Israelis out of Lebanon. The Israelis have been out of Lebanon now for 8 years and it doesn't seem to matter. Hezbollah is thriving. They are arming and attacking Israelis on the Israeli side of the border.
You quite rightly said the Israelis unilaterally got out of the Gaza. When it comes to the 1967 borders, let us remember, when Israel made peace with the Egyptians in that very historic moment of opportunity in the Middle East, the Israelis gave back the Sinai to the Egyptians that they had acquired in the 1967 war. They gave it back with all the oil and everything else. They said peace is more important to us than this land. You can have it.
Remember prior to the 1967 war? The West Bank was part of Jordan. Jordan controlled the West Bank. It was Jordanian territory. And then after a number of years, the Jordanians gave it to the Israelis. They didn't want to deal with the problems. So when we are talking about 1967 borders, does that mean that Jordan is going to take back the West Bank and deal with the problems that currently exist in the West Bank?
There was a reason that the Palestinian people turned to Hamas. They had a corrupt leader, a murderer, a terrorist in the name of Yasser Arafat. The billions and billions of dollars that the Europeans gave to the Palestinians through Yasser Arafat, that the Americans gave, in an effort to improve the lives of the Palestinian people, did not go to help the Palestinian people. Not one child got educated. Not one person's wounds or one person's illness was cured in a new hospital. Not one road was built. Not one business was created.
That money went into bank accounts that Arafat's widow is now living on, and rather nicely, I would say. Out of desperation for the corruption of Yasser Arafat's political party, Fattah, the people, the Palestinian people looked to Hamas, a terrorist organization, to get their basic rights met, their basic needs met. Hamas was providing social services, unemployment benefits to the unemployed, clothing to those that were not clothed, food to those that were hungry, instead of the legitimate Palestinian Authority. There is no wonder that the Palestinian people turned to Hamas.
But what we see in Hamas is a terrorist organization that refuses Israel's right to exist, that rains terror on border towns like Sderot, only because they can't get to the bigger towns because of the security and that security fence that the entire world condemned Israel for building in an effort to protect its own citizens from terrorist attacks.
So, now we are at a crossroads. The Palestinian people don't have to continue to support Hamas. Right now, the Gaza is a no-man's land. What few Christians are left in the Gaza are being subjected to forced conversions. Hamas is indiscriminantly walking the streets shooting at point-blank range any former member of Fattah. And the Palestinian people are caught in the crossfire.
It is time for the international community to speak as one voice in an effort to bring peace to the Palestinians and to the people of Israel, and the place to start is in Sderot.
Mr. WEINER. Let me just reclaim my time briefly and just make one or two points.
When I posited in the introduction to this special order the idea, well, what would you do if you were faced with this kind of challenge? Well, imagine, if you can, that you were able to build a wall tall enough into the sky to intercept any of those rockets. You would say jackpot. We figured out a way to do it. It is not pleasant, it is not nice, but we figured out a way. Or a giant net to catch them all.
Well, they didn't have indiscriminate missile attacks coming from this part of the Palestinian territories. They had human beings who had strapped armaments around their waist filled with ball bearings and nails, and they had them walk into cafes and walk into discotheques and blow themselves up and everyone near them.
So Israel, after trying to detect them as best they could and stop them as best they could, and having remarkable success as doing that, found that, you know, what, we don't like doing this, but let's build a wall, a fence in some cases, a wall in other parts of it, to stop people from just walking across.
Well, it is the equivalent of trying to catch those missiles, and it makes a certain amount of common sense. It is a terrible message and a terrible sign and you hate to do it for your neighbor, just the same way if you were living next door to someone to build a high concrete wall between you and your neighbor. You would never want to do it, unless they started walking across into your lawn and blowing you and your family up.
So they went and they constructed this wall. Do you know, I say rhetorically, because I know the gentlewoman from Nevada knows, the amount of international hue and cry that went on, how outrageous it was for the Israelis? Even our government said they were opposed to the idea of building this security fence.
Well, it has been successful. They have figured out a way, albeit not the best possible way. The best possible way is to say the people of the West Bank, the people of Gaza, you want your own state. We want you to have your own state. The United States does. The Israeli government does. A recent poll showed that 87 percent of the population of Israel said we want the Palestinians to have their own state. But if every time you cede more responsibility to the territories it leads to more violence, it makes you long for a solution.
{time} 1815
So what is the solution? Well, the most ideal solution is for the Palestinians, as you say, to stand up and say, look, we have high-rises here in Gaza City. We are living not very good lives here. We have been cut off from the international world because the source of our economic activities is being good neighbors to everyone else in the world. Israel and Egypt both went up economically the moment they signed the Camp David Accords because they realized that international cooperation, although not a great love, but international cooperation leads to benefits for everyone.
So the people of Gaza have to say, look, what is it that it is getting us? We are terrorizing our neighbors, but to what end? Eventually the Israelis are going to have to say something. The Israelis are deliberating now on what steps to take. Can you blame them if they say, we are going to cut off all electricity to the city until it stops? Can you blame them if they say, we are going to close off all border crossings until it stops? You can't possibly blame the Israeli Government for whatever they do to protect the people of Sderot.
But the objective should not be what kind of defensive, and you know that the Israelis are now experimenting with not one but two antimissile systems to try to stop them. It is billions of dollars.
When I visited Israel last week, the defense minister was saying, I am not satisfied with having one antimissile system. We may need to have two of them to protect them both from the Lebanese border and from the rockets coming in on Sderot.
But the real solution is for the Palestinian people and the international community to say, look, if you want to live side by side as a two-state community, let's get to talking about how to do that. If your objective is to have nonstop violence, then you act the way you are, the way Hamas and their supporters are acting in Gaza. You just keep doing acts of war over and over again. The Israeli people, God bless them, whenever there is a hint of a possibility of a chance of some kind of a negotiated settlement, they pursue it.
Ms. BERKLEY. When I was part of this congressional delegation a few weeks ago, and maybe last week you heard the same thing, it was the Israeli Government that was promoting providing resources for the Palestinians. They want the American Government to support Abu Mazen. They want us to prop up the Palestinian people because they know this might be the last opportunity they have for peace.
And you brought up a really good point. I can't say that the Egyptians and the Israelis love each other and sing Kumbiya by the camp fire. The same thing with the Jordanians. This is not a warm peace; it is a peace. You don't have to love thy neighbor, but you can live side by side in peace. I think that is what we should be going for.
If I thought for a minute these indiscriminate attacks on Sderot and other border towns was an effort to create a Palestinian state, maybe I could understand that, as addled as that is. But this has nothing to do with creating a Palestinian state; this has everything to be the elimination, dare I say extermination, of the State of Israel. That is what strikes fear in my heart.
Mr. WEINER. And then the question has to be raised, as much good intention as Secretary of State Rice and the administration may have here, having sit-downs and negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas and trying to present him with aid and trying to make his government or the idea that his thoughts or actions would be better for the Palestinian people, does that bring us one inch closer to stopping the attacks on Sderot? Does it do anything to truly enforce the idea that Gaza is under control? And the people voted for them. And by the way, this notion that they just carried, this is not like an electoral college map, they just carried Gaza, they have broad support throughout the West Bank as well.
Ms. BERKLEY. Well, Fatah's corruption permeated the entire Palestinian Authority.
Mr. WEINER. But I have to say to the gentlelady, this notion that it was a response to corruption, when someone campaigns and gives you a flyer, vote for me and I am going to wipe out the State of Israel, and then the moment they get in, they increase the amount of attacks going on, at a certain point you have to say this is not about who is going to fix the potholes. They are doing exactly what they said.
It might be true that message took hold in an environment where Fatah was corrupt, but I think we in some ways let them off the hook a little bit. They did campaign on the idea of driving Israel into the sea.
Ms. BERKLEY. And I would be the last one to disagree with you.
Mr. WEINER. But I think it is important to realize that we hear it just about every day out of the State Department, and this is true under Democratic administrations as well, Israel must show restraint. Every time there is an attack we hear that, Israel must show restraint.
Imagine if there were two attacks in New Jersey or in Pennsylvania. Imagine if there was one, and imagine if al Qaeda had just won the elections in Toronto and these attacks started, would any of us say we have to show restraint?
Ms. BERKLEY. Absolutely not.
Mr. WEINER. I believe that Israel has shown restraint the likes of which I don't think we have seen a nation on Earth ever show. If you think of the sheer number of attacks they have withstood over the course of time, putting aside the 2,000 or so in Sderot, forbearance has been the bottom line.
But I think if you want to truly solve this problem, first you have to let the Israelis do what they need to do to protect this tiny town.
Ms. BERKLEY. Yes.
Mr. WEINER. Also, you have to recognize when you look at these borders, no one, not even Hamas says the West Bank is still occupied. Israel left, and now there is no other explanation for the activity except to say that one of the things that they are doing is living up to their campaign promise.
This isn't the subject of rhetoric. Our colleague from Pennsylvania who has joined us saw this stockpile. This is the police station in Sderot. This is what they have in the back. You can see a little bit in the photographs, they mark taunts, Hebrew taunts on all of the rockets before they send them. This is essentially a pipe you can get down at a hardware store, four wings that stabilize it, and then there is essentially a pound and a half of armaments in the tip, just enough to kill and terrorize wherever it lands.
Ms. BERKLEY. We have one of our most esteemed freshmen here who was on the trip to Israel.
Mr. WEINER. I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. ALTMIRE. It was my first trip to Israel, and I know the gentlewoman from Nevada has been there multiple times, countless times, in fact. For me to have seen firsthand what you are talking about today, there really is nothing like seeing it in person.
When we went to the border, and I know that the gentlewoman has talked about this tonight, we went to the border with Gaza and we looked at Sderot and we had families there that until recently lived in Gaza. The mother of course with the children, she pointed across to where she used to live. She said, ``That used to be my house.'' She told her story about when she is getting her kids ready for school, the alarms will go off and they know that the bombs are starting to come in. She told this gut-wrenching story about her experience in a minivan with her kids getting ready to go to school and the alarm goes off. That really puts it in perspective that these are families that are just trying to get through the day, and this is what they have to deal with, not once as the gentleman from New York said, but repeatedly over and over again. These families have to endure the threat of that stockpile that he is talking about landing in their house, hitting their car and killing members of their family. These are things that we can't comprehend on a daily basis in this country, to have that threat every single day raining down upon you.
As the gentleman from New York described, in many instances these are primitive weapons that we are talking about. But in many instances these are weapons that have rained down on this community by the thousands, literally by the thousands. And we met with a gentleman that one of them had hit his house. Again, when you see firsthand the people that are affected by this and the children that are affected by this, it puts in perspective the fact that they are living right there on the border.
What struck me the most when we asked her the obvious question: Why don't you just move? I think that is what many of us might think about doing. And she said much more articulately than I can say tonight, but she said: ``Look, this is where we live. This is our home. If we move, then we have lost. If we move, they are going to move up to where we happen to be at that moment. Then they will start again and we will have to move again. We are not going to do that. We are going to stay here. This is our home. We are under great threat, but we are not moving.''
That really tells the tale of the type of people, the fortitude that we are talking about.
I had been watching the discussion and I couldn't sit back any longer. I had to tell my piece of the story having seen this firsthand, and what a magnificent thing it is to see the courage and the bravery of these people. But the threat that they live under is something that cannot be ignored.
Mr. WEINER. I thank the gentleman. It should also be pointed out that Sderot is becoming something of a ghost town, and more and more people are leaving the city. It is not a wealthy town. It doesn't have great industry. It was one of those places that makes Israel the nation that it is. A lot of North Africans have moved in there. It is a place of great diversity. You would be surprised seeing some of the faces that they are Israelis.
You also realize very quickly, one of the most stunning things to recent visitors, is what a tiny spit of land it really is. This neck of land, it is not far that you are going to be able to go.
When they had the Lebanese war, and Hezbollah had much more sophisticated weaponry, we had weapons that were going this far south. You have these that go this far north. There aren't too many places to go. There have been suicide bombings all throughout this area. There aren't too many places you can run.
So saying to the residents of Sderot, why don't you just leave, it ignores the fact that there aren't too many places. You essentially have one nation, as we all know, that is at war with 20 of her neighbors. This is not a peaceful neighborhood.
But the question arises, you don't get a chance to think about it when you are raising kids in that town and trying to figure out how to keep them safe. We spoke to a schoolteacher when I visited there a year ago, and that teacher tells the story of having 10-year-old kids having to take tranquilizers in the morning because it is a traumatizing experience to get up in the morning.
While there is some randomness to where the weapons hit, there is not a randomness to the time of day. They launch them during the mornings when the kids are on the way to school and in the afternoon when they are coming back from school, and they have a particular fondness for Sabbath and for holidays. There was a synagogue that was blown up right after morning prayers on a Saturday morning.
What is it that we should learn from this about going forward what our strategy should be? Well, for one thing, this tiny tract of land is where the weapons are coming through. They are not coming through Israel or through the Mediterranean Sea; although, there were one or two cases in years past where boats were intercepted, but we have a pretty sophisticated understanding what goes on here. It is coming through tunnels from Egypt.
So we should be saying to Egypt, for a country that gets $3.5 billion in aid every year, we should say to them, enough is enough. Until you show the ability to get control of this border, we are not going to provide any of our aid in the form of military. You want humanitarian assistance, that's fine.
Secondly, the last thing we want to have is for these to be tipped with laser-guided systems like the ones being proposed to that part of the world. We can't let that technology seep into the region so these now have precision guidance.
Finally, we have to say to the United Nations and to the international community: What more do you want the Israelis to do? They have left. They have left that part of the world. What is it that you are demanding they do?
I would say to the people who sponsor these resolutions in the United Nations condemning Israel, okay, picture yourself as being the chief administrative officer of a government who is getting attacked by thousands of rockets; what do you propose they do? A giant net in the sky? They tried building a wall and a fence here, and they were criticized for that.
From a policy perspective, and ``restraint'' is a nice and vague term, what we should be doing is saying to the Israelis, you need to protect yourselves, and we should be leading the charge at the United Nations to consider this international acts of war. They are a democracy. They are a freestanding government. These are acts of war. I think that the Israelis would be well within their rights to respond however they would like.
The final thing we have to do, and if some of my southern colleagues were here, they would come up with an interesting colloquialism on how to say this.
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But I hate to be a fly in the ointment about this whole idea of propping up Mahmoud Abbas. If Mahmoud Abbas has any ability to stop these rockets from launching from Gaza into Sderot, let him start to do something about it today. We keep hearing about this international conference and coming up with agreements and giving him money. I don't understand what possible good it's going to do when Fatah has no authority and no control over this part of the world.
Ms. BERKLEY. As I said earlier, Hamas is walking around the streets indiscriminately shooting anybody that had anything to do with Fatah. They're consolidating their power, power to do what I haven't got the slightest idea.
But I wanted to tell my colleague, who we had a pleasure of sharing this experience that I think he will remember when we all got back on the bus, there were a lot of people that were misty-eyed. I think it was a shock to most of us to see what these people are going through on a daily basis.
And I looked around at our colleagues, and these are pretty sophisticated politicians. They've been in office for quite a while in different capacities, but I think everybody was taken aback and shocked and very touched by the families that we met and felt the pain that they go through on a daily basis. It was an important message for us to see.
Mr. ALTMIRE. That's right. We were touched by the pain, but we were also touched by the courage that they endure daily these attacks, and they stay and they don't have to do that, but they make the decision to be there. And when you see the story and you see the children firsthand, and again, when they point across in the Gaza and say I used to live in that house right there, that used to be my house.
Ms. BERKLEY. And we could see the house. I mean, they didn't have to go it's over there behind the mountain, no, no, there it was.
And I have to tell you something else. One of the ministers that we met with said this about the conferences, and again, the Israelis are pushing any type of peace and support that they can get with the Palestinians. But they said, they want us to meet, so we'll meet, but if they refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist, what are we meeting about? Will they allow us to exist? What compromise do you make with people that don't recognize your right to exist? Do you compromise that you could exist for 20 more years, 30 more years, 50 more years? There's no compromise to be made with people that don't recognize that you are a person with a right to exist.
Mr. WEINER. Well, in conclusion, our time is expired, but I want to thank the gentlewoman from Nevada and the gentleman from Pennsylvania for joining us here today, and I just would close with this.
There are big, complicated conflicts that are going on in that part of that world. They're not going to be easy to resolve. For years, we've been watching with some level of success but a great deal of failure, but just imagine the circumstances if tomorrow, when you dropped off your kids at school, a couple of times during the day they'd have to look like this rather than studying their school books. Imagine if an 8, 9, 10-year-old child had to be on tranquilizers in order to get through the day.
There are some things that just are without any political nuance, without any varnish, and are just wrong. What's going on in Sderot is just wrong.
Mr. ISRAEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in great concern over the ongoing Qassam attacks on the southern city of Sderot, Israel. Sderot is a community that has been plagued with frequent and intense firing on its inhabitants and infrastructure since Hamas's takeover of Gaza. These Palestinian militants are attempting to destroy an entire population and bring everyday life there to a halt.
Even today, two Qassam rockets landed in the vicinity of Sderot. One of these rockets was aimed at and landed near a kindergarten, on the first week of the new school year. Imagine the dilemma parents in this region face--they don't know if their children on any given day are safer at school, or at home given the continued rocket firings.
These homemade rockets cannot aim solely at military targets because they do not have any degree of precision. They are primitive, short-
range, home-made rockets that do not have the technical capability to be guided, and consequently, strike innocent civilians. They have indiscriminately destroyed the economy and physically and psychologically devastated family life.
The current situation is unacceptable--the terror organization Hamas is clearly violating Israel's sovereignty and overriding Israel's right over its land and people.
A city of no more than 24,000, Sderot is less than a mile from the border with Gaza, where Israel withdrew its troops in the summer of 2005. Since then, thousands of these rockets pummeled this city and terrorized men, women and children on a daily basis. Sderot citizens are unable to go about their normal lives and should not be expected to live under this permanent threat.
Israel has shown considerable restraint and patience in dealing with those terrorist firing, despite the severity of the situation and the casualties and injuries they have taken. However, Israel has the complete right to defend itself against these intolerable attacks. No belief, however misguided, can justify the victimization of innocent people.
I would like to express my solidarity not only with the citizens of Sderot, but with victims of terrorism around the world. We need to do everything we can to bring an end to this unjust situation and help create a lasting peace so that the citizens of Sderot can go about their lives.
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