Gaza Cease-Fire

Floor Speech

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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.

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.

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